So I had vague memories of Star Trek Enterprise when it came out 15 years ago. Captain Quantum Leap, Hawt Vulcan, British Dude, Southern Dude, who the @#$% hires an alien doctor for a human ship, and the rest.
I watched most of the first season and then pretty much forgot about it.
And it seems so did everyone else.
Enterprise lasted 4 seasons while the 3 shows preceding it lasted 7 a piece. Even Andromeda (Hercules in space) manged 5! And as far as I can tell there's no real fandom of it, no one cosplaying Enterprise crew, no one quoting lines from it, no references to the Xindi (Zindi?), nothing.
I'm now catching up on Netflix (for the record Indian Netflix sucks) and... it's not that bad.
Acting is better than TNG (Patrick Steward aside), FX are the best of the 5 ST shows, there's lots of Earth based stories that viewers can relate to, lots of Easter eggs...
So why didn't/doesn't anyone care?
Some thoughts:
It's a prequel, in a franchise whose mission is 'boldly go where no one has gone before' they're going back.
(of course this didn't seem to hurt the Abrams Star Trek which made a gazillion starbucks at the box office)
More of the same. While there's some change it still feels like a Star Trek show. Same tech, same directing style, same people standing around spouting terrible dialogue, just with more blue. So much blue...
Pissing off the dedicated fans. OK, so it's a prequel. A prequel with Ferengi and Borg showing up 200 years early. And technology that's more advanced than Kirk had 100 years later. And hand waving with a 'temporal cold war'. They even left off the Star Trek name for the first season or two.
Pissing off the casual viewers. While trying to break with ST cliches it also has stories where Dr. Soong teams up with Khan's genetic upgrades against the Orion pirates. If that sentence made sense to you then congratulations.
Changing styles. The Battlestar Galactica reboot came along 2-3 years later and just blew this show away. I like space opera, I like it a lot. And I will settle for 'not that bad'. But only if 'really awesome' is not available. And once 'awesome' became an option 'not that bad' gets forgotten. Plus it came along just as DVDs and then steaming became ubiquitous. I can't remember the last time I made time in my schedule to watch a TV show (probably BSG). If I can watch anything I want any time I want, would Enterprise make the list?
The biggest thing was the waste of an interesting opportunity. It was us first stumbling out there. It could have really explored that for years.
Done well its compelling. Apollo 13 is just some guys in a sardine can but it hits the right notes and the stakes are well defined and serve the narrative.
I think the cast of Enterprise suffered from having the worst of both TNG and Voyager; mediocre to middle acting combined with bland boring characters who only managed to be interesting when episodes were explicitly about them. Phlox is the only one who I think was always fun to have on screen, and he was but the third in a line of eccentric doctor characters.
Honestly though I think the biggest hole in Enterprise is that the only thing more bland and uninteresting than the cast are the episodes. Seasons 1 and 2 have maybe three episodes I remember well between them and thought were good. That's even worse than season 1 of TNG! Seasons 3 and 4 did better, but not well enough to save the show from the body blows the ratings took in the first two.
People wanted to see the origins of the Federation, conflict with the Klingons, and the Earth-Romulan War. Enterprise made the Kingons cartoon villains, dealt with the origins of the Federation more in how much people talked about it than actually doing anything about it, and the show ended before we even got to the war with the Romulans. The most memorable episodes of Enterprise deal directly with the Andorians and the Vulcans imo, and the rest of it is varying degrees of forgettable which is probably why no one talks about it, cosplays it, or quotes it is precisely that.
Out of the 28 seasons of Star Trek, the Enterprise ones are most memorable for how mediocre they were.
Also just saying that it still shocks me Andromeda made it to five seasons. I thought that whole thing became boring after season two, and it just kept sinking deeper and deeper into incoherence from there.
My problem with ENT is that it either didn't feel like Star Trek, or tried too hard to be Star Trek (the Borg you mentioned are a great example). However, I loved the Mirror episodes.
Like Voyager, I think the problem is that they set up a radically different setting, then went and watered it down with the same old clichés and brainworms.
No shields - but they "polarised the hull plating" instead.
It's set just after first contact with the Vulcans - but hey, let's put a Klingon in the series opener for no good reason. And some Borg later on. We've got a female communications officer, a Vulcan and an engineer with a funny accent. At least Uhura, Spock and Scoty were good at their jobs unlike this mob.
Time travel. just ... stop it. Star Trek IV and Guardian of Forever are the only time travel stories worth keeping. With an honourable mention for Trials and Tribble-ations. Other than that they don't do anyone any favours. Despite the other flaws I mention, this was what made me think "this is going to be bad", and they did it in the middle of the pilot.
And stop going back to Earth. TOS hardly ever did it (just once, IIRC, and that was a thinly-veiled pilot for a spin-off series. And they went back in time anyway). Get out there and explore, for goodness' sake. HMS Beagle managed a five-year mission, and it was only 90' long. Sod off and don't come back until you've gone at least as far as V'Ger did.
The look of the thing. I realise that it's hard to make something that is simultaneously "futuristic for 2001" and "looks less advanced than futuristic for 1966", but that's no excuse for "looks like Hunt for Red October".
Admittedly my dislike may be coloured by SFDebris' rather scathing reviews, but I wasn't a great fan of it even before I saw those.
I liked the Andorians, and I liked the way that the Enterprise managed to bring them and the Vulcans slightly closer together (OK, it would have been better if it were done by a diplomatic mission rather than the Enterprise blundering around like fools, but I'll take what I can get). More of that would have been good. As would have been increasing the number of species seen as recurring characters (or even as new crewmwmbers - let that show the increasing influence of the Federation as time goes by - more and more non-human crewmembers in the background), although their prosthetics budget might not have been up to it.
I'm not normally a fan of crowbarring in references to the "future", but it might have been nice to address some human colonies that didn't want to join the Federation - a little hint as to how Tarsus IV developed to the point that the leader of the colony could choose to euthanize half the population. Or ones fled Khan's supermen and the Eugenics Wars and feared the Federation was the descendants of that.
And I forgot the final episode... (which I skipped ahead for along with the really fun Mirror Universe)
OMG...
The whole show was Rikers' holodeck program!
OK maybe just that episode but I like to think it was the WHOLE 4 SEASONS.
Most disrespectful ending since St Elsewhere, but at least when St Elsewhere did it it was clever (that is literally 1 of the 2 things I can remember from St Elsewhere, the other is Dr Hippy asking Dr Butthead about making a memorial to Vietnam protesters to go with the Vietnam Wall opening).
It has been a while (15 years) since I have seen it, so my memories may not be very accurate, but I remember that I really did not like the Captain.
I was expeting someone who was bold and assertive, someone who seemed a bit less evovled than Picard to reflect that this series was set before Kirks time.
Instead the Captain was weak and moany.
I did not like the opening song, also the sex seemed like it was there as a main course instead of spice.
No shields - but they "polarised the hull plating" instead.
It's set just after first contact with the Vulcans - but hey, let's put a Klingon in the series opener for no good reason. And some Borg later on. We've got a female communications officer, a Vulcan and an engineer with a funny accent. At least Uhura, Spock and Scoty were good at their jobs unlike this mob.
I can't help but think if they'd make it 50 years earlier it might have been more interesting. At a few points they do say outright there's no wars on Earth and that's a shame because I'd find a US-China space war a lot more interesting than an Earth-Rubber Forehead conflict. Imagine a balkanized move to the stars, with US, European, Islamic Conference, OAS, Chinese, etc fleets. Plus rebels, genetic augments, greedy corporations and all the non-real world factions.
And y'know, if they want diversity I would love a devout Muslim woman on the cast somewhere. MOre signs that the Earth is not a California shopping mall, that diversity still mean diverse lifestyles, faiths and opinions.
It's amusing that the Enterprise crew is perhaps less diverse than that of Star Trek, which featured among its bridge crew a black woman (a twofer!) and a Russian. At the height of the Cold War. Enterprise really should have had an Iraqi and a transgender crewperson.
There was an early episode where the Enterprise D was at a planet of hermaphrodites and Riker gets off with one. The actor was a woman in androgynous clothes and makeup, although Jonathan Frakes originally wanted the character to be played by a male actor.
By comparison, I'm thinking of some of the supporting cast that have popped up on Doctor Who in the last few years - quite a few different ethnicities and gender preferences dropped in with no comment.
Hmm, I'm not a fan of diversity just for diversity's sake, if you take my meaning, and not that that's what you're saying. Someone like Vasquez in Aliens was absolutely, positively perfect (and there's a hilarious story that she went to the audition thinking Aliens was about "illegal aliens"!) but sometimes in later Star Trek series, it has felt forced. Unlike the original, as you point out, which was extremely diverse all on its own (this really stood out to me in the recent movie remakes, too) but felt "natural".
I didn't realize these were on Netflix so I might check them out now
It's not so much prequelitis, but that it's not a sequel to the frankly sublime Deep Space 9.
See, DS9 changed the shape and politics of the Alpha Quadrant following a serious, sustained threat from an aggressive outside force.
I wanted to see how the Federation in particular deals with the aftermath of the Dominion War. It went from Scientific to full-on War Footing. Stuff like that doesn't just get put neatly back in it's box.
The Dominion War also brought the Alpha Quadrant together, in the end. Everyone vs The Dominion and The Breen in the end.
We deserve a follow up to that.
Enterprise went back to fill in blanks that didn't exist before it created them for it to fill in.
This might ruffle some feathers, but I think any new ST endeavor will have a hard time both serving the diehards and intriguing casual fans and new audiences. A large chunk of the diehards like what they like, and don't want to see anything truly different from ST. Meanwhile, many casual fans tend to feel like they've seen it all before -- a result of the many self-imposed 'rules' of ST -- and want something fresh.
ST needs both audiences...but good luck making that work (see the Abrams films here too). As someone said, both Voyager and Enterprise promised something fresh and new, but wussed out *immediately*.
Ultimately, I think Enterprise was 'same' enough to not interest new audiences, but 'different' enough -- part of that being that it wasn't a continuation of the other TV series' 'timeline' -- to tamp down the enthusiasm of the diehards.
The sweet spot for ST is very, very narrow, if it's even achievable IMO. Look at Discovery. Any other possible issues aside, the fact that it's breaking from the episodic format and (*gasp*) willing to show Federation personnel in conflict is enough to doom it among certain segments.
Star Trek Enterprise was so painfully 'Americana' that it killed it for me.
The rest of the franchise was multi-cultural and an effort on the behalf of all humans. Enterprise just felt like 'America leading the world which doesn't actually appear to make much if any contribution to the foundation of the Federation'.
The EU is much closer to a tolerant left-leaning society like the Federation but perhaps they were conveniently nuked during the war and the US suddenly became tolerant and progressive. Ugh
Anyway, the plot also seems tame and uninspired. I can't really put my finger on it. Compared to Deep Space 9 that has a number of interesting plot-lines I really have no interest in Enterprise.
I'm a fan of Enterprise. Sure there were some things wrong with it. I've always held the belief that when Star Trek writers got lazy, they'd do some stupid time travel story line. Way to much of that happened with Enterprise.
I really liked the flavor of the first couple of seasons with them kind of flailing around in space. A ship that was the pinnacle of their techonology, but as they discovered in most cases, was laughable.
I think the Xindi arc went on for to long, but I really enjoyed the premise behind it. Humanity had just thrown off the shackles of their war like nature. They were trying to become a better people, and all of a sudden they're thrown right back into it.
Season 4, I liked that they took the opportunity to close some gaps. The Klingon thing, while it really didn't need any attention, was neat that they did it. I didn't even mind the Borg, since it was an attempt to try to tie First Contact into the continuity.
I wish they'd have been able to go on with the show, it had some great potential, but it was a victim of its time I think.
I've been watching Enterprise on Netflix (and yes, it is indeed on US Netflix). I'm nearly done with the series, having just watched the two Mirror episodes, and I've enjoyed it thoroughly despite some episodes being laughably terrible. I really like the visuals and set design; in many ways NX-01 is more realistic than any of the other ships on Star Trek since everything "feels" smaller and more confined. There was too much sexuality in the show; the aforementioned episode where the characters smear stuff on each other made me burst out laughing at how contrived that situation was. The time episodes were mostly bad too, and they really did not need to cover the stupid Klingon head ridge disappearance thing (TBH they should have never mentioned it even in the DS9 episode; just chalk it up to TOS not having Klingon forehead makeup in its low budget and move on).
Still, for all of its faults, I've enjoyed the show and would still recommend it to any Star Trek fan to watch at least once. Just gotta muscle your way through the bad episodes...
Like all the other TV Treks (other than ToS) there was no adventure, less interesting stories, and a enough technobabble to give Voyager a run for its money. If TV Guide were still around they'd list the current episode with the sentence, "The crew struggles with some manufactured crisis while T'Pol goes into heat. Again."
Then there was the whole "that thing you like from the other show, well we actually did it first" theme that ran through the series.
The time travel plot of the show was boring drivel on its best day.
The series is only good for those two Mirror universe episodes. Otherwise it's completely irrelevant to the franchise, sort of like the TNG movies.
Oh, and the whole anti-military theme of the third season got old fast. "Let's put Marines on the ship and call them Makos so the crew can hate them because they're military and deserve to be hated because they're not enlightened like the rest of us. Then they can try to take over the ship every other episode because that's what the military does when they're on a ship." I swear the writing hit a level of childishness that even TNG couldn't manage.
For me, the problem with Enterprise was just that it was boring.
While I tend to gravitate towards scifi over other genres, the biggest drawcard for me in any show is interesting characters, and without that no amount of pewpew lasers will win the day. Even at its worst, the crew in TNG were interesting.
From the little I watched of Enterprise, it was pretty much just Captain Bakula and a bunch of cardboard cutouts. And without an interesting crew, it was never going to hold my attention.
RiTides wrote: Hmm, I'm not a fan of diversity just for diversity's sake, if you take my meaning, and not that that's what you're saying. Someone like Vasquez in Aliens was absolutely, positively perfect (and there's a hilarious story that she went to the audition thinking Aliens was about "illegal aliens"!) but sometimes in later Star Trek series, it has felt forced. Unlike the original, as you point out, which was extremely diverse all on its own (this really stood out to me in the recent movie remakes, too) but felt "natural".
I didn't realize these were on Netflix so I might check them out now
Chekhov was originally added to get the co-ed market believe it or not.
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Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: It's not so much prequelitis, but that it's not a sequel to the frankly sublime Deep Space 9.
See, DS9 changed the shape and politics of the Alpha Quadrant following a serious, sustained threat from an aggressive outside force.
I wanted to see how the Federation in particular deals with the aftermath of the Dominion War. It went from Scientific to full-on War Footing. Stuff like that doesn't just get put neatly back in it's box.
The Dominion War also brought the Alpha Quadrant together, in the end. Everyone vs The Dominion and The Breen in the end.
We deserve a follow up to that.
Enterprise went back to fill in blanks that didn't exist before it created them for it to fill in.
Well there's no series after DS9. Infact some bits of the future have advanced weaponry that blow up Borg cubes with the same ease as the bioships did.
I'd posit thats the point the Federation goes from republic...to EMPIRE! mauahahaha
Now there's a series I'd watch. Watch our intrepid young heroes rampage through the galaxy the Spanish through the New World. Think the Mirrorverse but with Sovereign class dreadnoughts leading the good fight...
Part of the issue was that, the kinda fundamental core premise of Star Trek from the beginning was that Earth had it's gak sorted out, everything was amazing and peaceful at home, and humanity was standing on its own amongst other races and cultures, and the excitement came from exploring the true unknown and inner improvement as opposed to retreading or remaking what already was or had been.
Enterprise, in exploring this earlier time, really rather backtracked on the fundamental premise and spent way too much time in an era that the rest of the series was completely disconnected from, and the retcons just made it worse.
The other parts were bad acting, bad writing, terrible retcons, an awful intro sequence, and generally a poor concept and execution all around.
Vaktathi wrote: Part of the issue was that, the kinda fundamental core premise of Star Trek from the beginning was that Earth had it's gak sorted out, everything was amazing and peaceful at home, and humanity was standing on its own amongst other races and cultures, and the excitement came from exploring the true unknown and inner improvement as opposed to retreading or remaking what already was or had been.
Enterprise, in exploring this earlier time, really rather backtracked on the fundamental premise and spent way too much time in an era that the rest of the series was completely disconnected from, and the retcons just made it worse.
The other parts were bad acting, bad writing, terrible retcons, an awful intro sequence, and generally a poor concept and execution all around.
I personally found the intro sequence to be the best of all the shows.
It was that bad. Bland actors (especially Cap'n Quantum, king of incoherent decision-making and terrible dog owner), bad scripts, incoherent stories, shoe-horning random 'Trek-things' in, then going off on that asinine time war 'plot' (bonus for random Nazis). Just... ugh.
The whole crew was offensively bad at diplomacy and exploration. The 'oppressive Vulcans' were just baffling. No idea why they'd care.
I think a big problem with Enterprise is the Time War being a major focus for much of the show. Time travel is messy, it's confusing and you really need to know your gak if you're going to try it. Or, do what Doctor Who does and just ignore the main principles of it to make a character drama.
I think the best part of Enterprise was Season 4, however they essentially just rushed it too much. If most of Enterprises season 4 storylines were instead miniarcs throughout the show - 6 episodes, say (and this may include Mirror, Mirror too!) throughout the shows run, I think it would have been better received.
Enterprise came at the end of a very long period of Star Trek being on TV continuously, running with a formula that only grew more rigid over that time. There was a real burn out factor, especially after Voyager had really tested a lot of people's patience through its run.
The other issue is that human crew in Star Trek got really terribly generic over time. It was bad in Voyager, and in Enterprise it was awful. As in previous shows the aliens were normally pretty interesting, but man I just could not tell the engineer apart from the security chief in any way. They were both completely generic human people. The comms officer started with a role translating language but they decided that wasn't very interesting after a couple of episodes* and she just became another generic human crew member.
Also after years of awkward fan service with Seven on Nine, dropping a Vulcan in this series to do much the same thing was something of a tipping point. Particularly because outside of the fan service, they were both interesting characters.
*And fair enough, it didn't really make for interesting plots, just functioning to sometimes add a roadblock delay to the story.
It's the only Star Treck show I've not watched all the episodes of, it just didn't seem to have any chemistry (and this is from someone who doesn't dislike Voyager)
It started off OK (well adequate) with the 'we're so backward technology wise' theme but drifted down from there
and then came the time war, dear Gods keep script writers away from time travel, and I just gave up
especially as the 'characters' in the crew just got less and less interesting as time went on, we're meant to like (or dislike) them more as we get to know them, but instead the just blured together into an uninteresting mush of humans with a few poorly served (plot wise) aliens as spice
RiTides wrote:Hmm, I'm not a fan of diversity just for diversity's sake, if you take my meaning, and not that that's what you're saying. Someone like Vasquez in Aliens was absolutely, positively perfect (and there's a hilarious story that she went to the audition thinking Aliens was about "illegal aliens"!) but sometimes in later Star Trek series, it has felt forced. Unlike the original, as you point out, which was extremely diverse all on its own (this really stood out to me in the recent movie remakes, too) but felt "natural".
Yes, that's what I meant - they should make a conscious decision to diversify the cast, but the characterisation, drama and plot doesn't need to necessarily always draw from that diversity; just having them there can make enough of a point (like Furiosa in Mad Max; the film just put a woman into the alpha dog role, left her to get on with it without comment and let the audience draw whatever message they want).
gorgon wrote:This might ruffle some feathers, but I think any new ST endeavor will have a hard time both serving the diehards and intriguing casual fans and new audiences. A large chunk of the diehards like what they like, and don't want to see anything truly different from ST. Meanwhile, many casual fans tend to feel like they've seen it all before -- a result of the many self-imposed 'rules' of ST -- and want something fresh.
ST needs both audiences...but good luck making that work (see the Abrams films here too).
IMO, the Abrams films look like they decided to update the idea for the current audience. If any old fans liked it enough to come along then fine, but they weren't really chasing them.
AndrewGPaul - I think it's just a different take, but when I watched Mad Max it did not even occur to me to wonder about Furiosa being featured. Imo, that's what you're going for - characters that fit their roles perfectly. Some later Star Trek casts just didn't gel as well as the original mix, imo (how perfectly those characters were made stuck out to me again even in the remakes). Then again I'm just a junkie for the original, too
gorgon wrote:This might ruffle some feathers, but I think any new ST endeavor will have a hard time both serving the diehards and intriguing casual fans and new audiences. A large chunk of the diehards like what they like, and don't want to see anything truly different from ST. Meanwhile, many casual fans tend to feel like they've seen it all before -- a result of the many self-imposed 'rules' of ST -- and want something fresh.
ST needs both audiences...but good luck making that work (see the Abrams films here too).
IMO, the Abrams films look like they decided to update the idea for the current audience. If any old fans liked it enough to come along then fine, but they weren't really chasing them.
Oh, I agree. And note that the biggest critics of those films were among the core Trekker audience.
Vaktathi wrote: The other parts were bad acting, bad writing, terrible retcons, an awful intro sequence, and generally a poor concept and execution all around.
I personally found the intro sequence to be the best of all the shows.
Yeah, I totally agree. But the diehards only ever want ships gliding through space to the tune of some orchestral suite.
Frazzled wrote: Bab 5's intros and BSG's just beat the crap out of any of them but STOS.
And when I say BSG I mean both series.
I agree with this.
I ended up seeing about a third of the Enterprise series because it happened to play at the time of day when I had to wash dishes. Other than the mirror episodes and terrorist Robocop, it was pretty forgettable. My friends had a big get together for the final episode, which pretty much ensured we'd never buy the DVD's or watch reruns.
Of course, if someone puts a (Ships Only) edit on YouTube, like they have for the films and TNG, I'd definitely watch that.
Breotan wrote: Like all the other TV Treks (other than ToS) there was no adventure, less interesting stories, and a enough technobabble to give Voyager a run for its money. If TV Guide were still around they'd list the current episode with the sentence, "The crew struggles with some manufactured crisis while T'Pol goes into heat. Again."
Then there was the whole "that thing you like from the other show, well we actually did it first" theme that ran through the series.
The time travel plot of the show was boring drivel on its best day.
The series is only good for those two Mirror universe episodes. Otherwise it's completely irrelevant to the franchise, sort of like the TNG movies.
Oh, and the whole anti-military theme of the third season got old fast. "Let's put Marines on the ship and call them Makos so the crew can hate them because they're military and deserve to be hated because they're not enlightened like the rest of us. Then they can try to take over the ship every other episode because that's what the military does when they're on a ship." I swear the writing hit a level of childishness that even TNG couldn't manage.
Not having a gigantic warmurderboner = childishness. What an odd perspective. Also one that's evidently coloured your recollections of the series, given the MACO plotline was pretty much the opposite of your characterisation and ended, like most of DS9, as a repudiation of the standard "pacifist explorers only club" tone of Star Trek - Reed recognising his problem with the MACOs was more about his own macho insecurities eventually coming to respect and rely on them, and Archer coming to the view that the Galaxy is a dangerous place and having trained soldiers on-hand when needed wasn't a bad idea afterall hardly sounds "anti-military". Then again usually when I see people deploy phrases like "anti-military" what they mean is "anything other than total and unequivocal support for modern centrist-interventionist dogma", so it's not that surprising that you'd dislike a plotline that actually bothers to walk the characters through the process of changing their minds on the subject rather than just immediately declaring that Starfleet are hippie-weenies then running 45 minutes of an American flag waving gently in the breeze while the Team America theme plays on repeat.
As to the topic - Enterprise isn't bad, hell on occasion it was a better Star Trek show(though not a better TV show) than DS9(which also spent more time deconstructing Star Trek than deconstructing modern society, ie entirely missing the point). The earlier episodes were fairly average, awkward gel-rubbing nonsense aside, but a lot of folk write them off because they're "more of the same" and for some reason I continue to fail to fathom a lot of people profess to like something and then get really annoyed when it doesn't radically change in tone and content the moment they become even momentarily bored of it. The Vulcan and Andorian arc is actually really good IMO, more stories in that vein would have been welcome. I even quite like the Phlox-centric stories though a lot of people seem to really despise that character for some reason.
The problem is the show couldn't decide who the audience it wanted to appeal to was. They made compromises to try and appeal to non-Trek fans that annoyed the Trek fans, but they also refused to stray too far from the basic Trek formula so people who didn't like Trek still didn't find much to like. It didn't help that most of the time travel stuff was either boring or flat-out slowed, or that Quantum Leap Guy didn't really have the chops to pull off the whole "Star Trek: 24" nonsense they tried to insert with the Xindi arc.
Mr Morden wrote: I wish they would release a Mirror Universe box set
Not sure if its of interest, but I did see that a new range of comic books set in the mirror universe was due to be released (one episode has a cover with a goatee'd Picard on the cover) - will see if I can find more details.
Mr Morden wrote: I wish they would release a Mirror Universe box set
Not sure if its of interest, but I did see that a new range of comic books set in the mirror universe was due to be released (one episode has a cover with a goatee'd Picard on the cover) - will see if I can find more details.
Thansk it does osund intersting - I have quite a few of the novels
I think no one cares because it is ubiquitous without having an identity of its own. Same with most tv today. I really like Dark Space. I really like Killjoys. I can't keep their plot lines straight. Which one has the ironic femal ship computer if only she were human again? We have a glut of great stuff right now. that and nobody has an attention span beyond a mouse.
loved that series much more so then ds9 or voyager. That intro song to enterprise, my favorite opening song in a tv that ive ever seen. though firefly was close.
ssisal wrote: loved that series much more so then ds9 or voyager. That intro song to enterprise, my favorite opening song in a tv that ive ever seen. though firefly was close.
After seeing a few a dozen times it's a bit of earworm but I can't say I like it.
The imagery however is stellar. Going from rafts to sailing ships to planes, to the real life space shuttle enterprise to the fictional ships was brilliant and a reminder of why ST appeals. It's a show that stubbornly insists we're going to make it and things are going to get better. And that's a message worth repeating.
I mean OK Dr Soong and Khan's supermen vs the Klingons is cool. Maybe not a 3 part episode worth of cool, but cool. And Brent Spinner is fun.
But then following it up with a 2 parter explaining why the TOS and TNG Klingons look different? No, no one care, no.
They dealt with it in DS9 in one sentence "We don't talk about them".
Lessee Nazis, Orion slavers (twice!), some long thing about Andorans (no one cares about Andorans!), Archer overthrows the Vulcan government and replaced them with religious fundamentalists, nothing can go wrong with that.
There was one really good episode where a plague is loose on the ship and various members are possessed by two alien observers making cynical observations. Very, very good, very Star Trek. A bit of fan fic when the aliens turn out to be the Orions, but overall quite good.
A two parter with the Romulans was a nice tease of what could have been.
And of course the Mirror Universe episode, but again, not just Mirror Universe, it was also Tholians, Gorn and TOS USS Reliant. Just a bit too much...
Heading into the final episodes now, founding the Federation and such and then the revelation the whole show was Riker's holodeck program...
The big weakness is still the cast. T'Pol can't tell the difference between logical and bored, the black guy and the Asian girl are just non-entities, and Quantum Leap is just wrong in the part. British dude is OK and the Doctor is fun. Good Ole Boy engineer I'm on the fence about.
Yeah. I felt that Season 3 was overall an improvement over the first two, and in spite of the shoe horned time travel story line. Then Season 4 comes, which just consisted of all the writer's fan fic fantasies made manifest. The only good episodes in my opinion were the two part In a Mirror, Darkly and the two parter on Vulcan that made the Vulcans less dickish. The Romulan drone ship stuff was good too. A complete cop out on that season for never giving us the Earth-Romulan War. EDIT: Was the borg episode season 4 or 2? The borg episode that tied into First Contact I enjoyed.
And I'm totally with you Kid on the explanation for why TOS an TNG Klingon's looked different. That entire plot was just slowed, and a pointless explanation for something that didn't need to be explained.
Funnily enough, I dipped back into it after reading this thread.
Towards the end of season one atm. Its been hit and miss so far and hasnt really grabbed my attention.
I think Voyager is easier to return to. Once you've had your expectations reset by reality and time to come to terms with psychotic Janeway, Poor Dumb Harry, Hamdoctor, Wooden Indian, Bored Vulcan and the rest, you can enjoy the show for what it was. with Enterprise, I feel like once you sift past the stupid and the wasteful, there isn't any charm underneath it all.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: I think Voyager is easier to return to. Once you've had your expectations reset by reality and time to come to terms with psychotic Janeway, Poor Dumb Harry, Hamdoctor, Wooden Indian, Bored Vulcan and the rest, you can enjoy the show for what it was. with Enterprise, I feel like once you sift past the stupid and the wasteful, there isn't any charm underneath it all.
True, but Robert Picardo was The Cowboy, and no matter how bad his ham acting was in Voyager, I can forgive him, because he was The Cowboy
BobtheInquisitor wrote: I think Voyager is easier to return to. Once you've had your expectations reset by reality and time to come to terms with psychotic Janeway, Poor Dumb Harry, Hamdoctor, Wooden Indian, Bored Vulcan and the rest, you can enjoy the show for what it was. with Enterprise, I feel like once you sift past the stupid and the wasteful, there isn't any charm underneath it all.
True, but Robert Picardo was The Cowboy, and no matter how bad his ham acting was in Voyager, I can forgive him, because he was The Cowboy
Loved The Cowboy. Also, JohnnyCab. And his role in Gremlins 2. He and 7/9 were by far the two most enjoyable actors to watch.
However, I know a lot of people who can't deal with a bit of ham.
It was too bright and cheery, clean and spacious, not enough feeling of risk given they're supposed to be space travel pioneers.
If I'd been in charge it would have been Das Boot in space. Cramped and confined, pipes, handles and levers everywhere, red lighting and dirty jumpsuits. Genuinely dangerous with hull leaks and fires when they take any damage. Shots of the crew running down corridors yelling at people to leap into their bunks to clear the way for them to manually load photon torpedoes.
I like that idea a lot, cut the crew to like a dozen, and have a no one is safe rule. Maybe not Game of Thrones level of death, but at least once a season put all the names in a hat and whoever you pull out is gone. Dead, crippled, transferred, resigned whatever.
Enterprise definitely suffered from the plot armor problem.
And a smaller dirtier ship would be nice too.
Maybe in 20 years when Paramont makes the prequel to Enterprise...
At that point, why even make Star Trek? Just buy the rights to a cheaper IP or create your own. Trek isn't a cheap universe to work in, and Apollo Boot would by dramatic necessity jettison most of the recognizable (and thus expensive) elements of the setting.
Best to leave Trek dead unless you have a good Star Trek story.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: At that point, why even make Star Trek? Just buy the rights to a cheaper IP or create your own. Trek isn't a cheap universe to work in, and Apollo Boot would by dramatic necessity jettison most of the recognizable (and thus expensive) elements of the setting.
Best to leave Trek dead unless you have a good Star Trek story.
A good philosophical question. There's a reason Hollywood is doing is some many reboots, remakes and sequels is they know they have an uphill battle for awareness. These days if you have a phone and credit card you can watch (almost) anything every made any time you want. Why should I watch Howard Treesong's Apollo Boot when I've never heard of it? Now when there's a new show with the brand name of that show I liked when I was a kid on.
The 2000s Battlestar Galactica was miles away thematically from the 70s one, but does anyone think it would have succeeded without the brand name and familiar ship designs of the original?
That being said, if Howard and Bob launch Apollo Boot, I'll be sure to tune in!
BSG was pretty much a dead brand, financially and culturally. Apollo Boot might as well be Buck Rogers Lost In Space 1999. The names have the same amount of recognition as old BSG, but are far cheaper than a cash cow like Star Trek. Someone has to start new IPs or studios will never have the next Star Wars or Game of Tnrones. Pursuing the old IPs risks damaging the brands.
Compel wrote: Picardo and 7 of 9 were the best parts of Voyager in my opinion. Particularly the interplay between them.
They're pretty much the main reason I watched the show.
I got a little tired of 7's whining about efficiency all the time, but their interplay was indeed good. I only wish they'd done more with her singing abilities as well as his - she's got a pretty darn good voice.
Kid_Kyoto wrote: I like that idea a lot, cut the crew to like a dozen, and have a no one is safe rule. Maybe not Game of Thrones level of death, but at least once a season put all the names in a hat and whoever you pull out is gone. Dead, crippled, transferred, resigned whatever.
Enterprise definitely suffered from the plot armor problem.
And a smaller dirtier ship would be nice too.
Maybe in 20 years when Paramont makes the prequel to Enterprise...
The 2000s Battlestar Galactica was miles away thematically from the 70s one, but does anyone think it would have succeeded without the brand name and familiar ship designs of the original?!
I'm amazed it succeeded as it is... I hear it got better once it got going, but I barely made it through the pilot episode.
The gritty small ship approach sounds an awful lot like The Expanse. Just to be abundantly clear, I view that as an awesome thing. I'd totally watch a show in that style with early Trek tech.
One where the ship and crew pack low tech backups for their weapons because the high tech really is experimental, and liable to explode or misfire.
Gritty isn't really how Star Trek works though, and lacking basic things we already have like automated loading mechanisms would probably cause even more fan outrage than the "Enterprise looks more advanced than TOS" complaint that often got thrown around. I actually like the design of the NX-1 as a ship. It looked simple and utilitarian, which makes sense for a species that is only just now going into space. The technology was definitely a step back though, with humans only harnessing deflector shields in the final season and phaser beams being mounted on actual turrets rather than charged on arrays. The fear of the transporter I think was a particularly nice touch.
Ultimately I don't think the danger was the issue. There was plenty of danger and unknown in Enterprise, sometimes even playing at things the audience already knew but that the characters obviously did not.
In the end it all came down to writing, which was often mediocre at best.
Mirror Universe 2 parter, Terrorist Robocop (RoboTerrorist? TerrorCop?), and the St Elsewhere ending.
Mirror Universe was the best the show ever was, I'd have been up for a season 5 of nothing but Mirror Universe.
RoboTerrorist was particularly uninspiring, generic racist @$$ with a death ray aimed at Earth. At the very least I'd have thrown in a Romulan spy manipulating him. Hey there's a traitor on the ship! I wonder if it'll be a main cast member? How about the British guy who you showed was a traitor not 3 episodes ago? No.
OK, how about that supporting cast guy who always looks pissed? How about him? No.
OK, then who? Oh some ensign we never saw before. Well that was... dramatic. Even 24 had more guts than that.
The finale was voted worst episode of Star Trek EVAH and I wouldn't go quite that far. I kind of like the idea that the whole damn show was just Riker's holodeck program. And the bit where he kisses T'Pol during a pause in the program, classy! Killing Trip kind of gratuitious, I mean it's the last episode and a holodeck program to boot! Go big or go home! The corridors should have been running red with the blood of cast members! Of course they did that in the Mirror episode so I can let it go.
Ah well.
In conclusion I think it was all timing. The show came along just as we were entering two new ages - the age of watch anything ever made any time, and the age of prestige TV. Enterprise was acceptably mediocre in a time when I could be watching good/great any time I want. Compare with the the rebooted Battlestar Galactica and Dr Who and there's just no reason to watch it. It was the cap stone of 15 years of new Star Trek (TNG-DS9-V'ger-the other one) and it seems the writers were just out of gas.
I also think the finale of Enterprise gets unwarranted hate. It was bad, bordering on a straight kick to the balls of "hey don't you wish we hadn't killed twenty plus straight years of Star Trek on television with our awful show that was both awful and jerry rigged a lack luster ending and killed one of the less bad characters just because it could" (damn that was a long one...) but it wasn't the worst episode ever.
I'm sorry but no episode of TV I think can ever be worse than the Voyager episode "Threshold." An episode so bad and so hated by pretty much everyone that the writers of the show retconned it out of existence!
Yeah Threshold. The first one I thought of for worst episode EVAH. It takes a lot to make Star Trek fans upset about the bad science.
The one where Kirk switches brains with a woman and we learn wimmins can't be captains because they have soft parts and feelings and wotnot was pretty bad too.
And all of the animated series. All of it.
Y'know more and more I like the idea this was all a holodeck program with some liberties taken.
Kind of like how in historical movies everyone still has perfect teeth, no small pox scars and any racist/sexist rough edges are smoothed over for modern sensibilities.
LordofHats wrote: I also think the finale of Enterprise gets unwarranted hate. It was bad, bordering on a straight kick to the balls of "hey don't you wish we hadn't killed twenty plus straight years of Star Trek on television with our awful show that was both awful and jerry rigged a lack luster ending and killed one of the less bad characters just because it could" (damn that was a long one...) but it wasn't the worst episode ever.
I'm sorry but no episode of TV I think can ever be worse than the Voyager episode "Threshold." An episode so bad and so hated by pretty much everyone that the writers of the show retconned it out of existence!
What about that episode that was all about Boxing? That was truely awful
Yeah the animiated show had potential but the cheap (and I say this as child of the 70s who grew up watching Scooby Doo) animation just killed it. Makes GI Joe look like Akira.
And PS thanks to everyone who recommended the Expanse, started it tonight, just want the Holo Doctor ordered.
ENT is a fine show. Sorry to see it slagged off so badly ITT. It certainly struggled through some of its arcs but I came to really like the crew and the "birth of the Federation" stuff is IMO some of the most interesting Trek ever written.
After enjoying in TNG and DS9 and tolerating VGR I pretty much stopped watching ENT during the first episode. This past year I decided to go back and give it a shot and I'm SLOWLY.... making my way through it. It's not as terrible as I thought it would be, but it isn't good and the theme is atrocious.
With Discovery coming up I feel like we're on the cusp of more sub-par Trek :(
It didnt get the chance it deserved.
People forget, Ds9 had a gakky first season and a half, TNG had bad first couple of seasons.
What I think killed it was Trekkies are continuity nerds, and after being spoiled with it from TNG to VOY having one with none f that made them hate it.
I don't think Star Trek fans are any more obsessed with continuity than most people observing a fictional tale. No one cared that Trills in DS9 looked nothing like a one off character in TNG. Fans didn't care that the depiction of Ferengi in early TNG was completely different from later TNG or DS9. No one ever even bother to care that if you watch "The Jem'Hadar" at the end of DS9 season 2, it actually makes no sense whatsoever for the Founders to be the Changlings because why send a Vorta to spy on anyone when you can send a Changling, and Eris looked at Odo like she had no idea who or what he was.
But of course these are all either minor details or bad ideas/depictions that got turned around into much better ones later down the line. Minor continuity errors fall by the wayside so long as they're minor and the error spawns from things being improved.
The problem with Star Trek, and I think any long running franchise, is that between releases you inevitably come up with the problem of "not my head canon" where the most dedicated of fans get certain ideas stuck in their heads, ideas that realistically have no bearing on the actual product, but that rapidly become as beloved as the product itself. A good example are all the people who became obsessed with the idea "phasers can't be fired at warp," which was a restriction never once uttered on screen of any Star Trek series but became an obsession of long time fans when Into Darkness came out. Ignore that there are several cases in later Star Trek of particle weapons being fired at warp speeds. No. Some fans got it completely independent of any canon product that "phasers can't be fired at warp" and thus Into Darkness ruined the continuity. I doubt any fan actually gave a damn that "phases can now be fired at warp." Fans put a lot of their own creativity into the products they love, to the point that they adopt the creation to themselves. When that creation goes somewhere they don't like it's not enough that they don't like it they want to invalidate it from within the creation itself. It wasn't enough to call Into Darkness a bad film. People wanted to invalidate it from within the creation itself. You see the same behavior in Mass Effect fandom, Avatar fandom, Star Gate fandom. Really anything that runs on long enough that the kids who grew up watching it become adults runs into the problem.
Enterprise got hit hard with this, because almost every other episode when it was first airing there were people screaming over the internet about how "this is a retcon" or "that can't be canon" and "this is ruining the continuity." Never mind that they were all obsessing over tiny details, some so tiny they constituted being made up by fans more than anything. The fan base tore Enterprise apart as much as as well as the inevitable problem of "this takes place before TOS but it looks so much more advanced" problem that comes from a 30 year gap in production and a better budget. Add on top that even accounting for most Star Trek shows having mediocre first seasons Enterprises first season was bad.
I think accrediting Enterprises general failure to internet fan rage, particularly keeping in mind of the time, is giving the fans too much influence. I don't think the economics makes sense. For the show to do so poorly like that, there has to be something bigger, more fundamentally wrong.
I mean, maybe the whole, "this looks more advanced but is supposed to be before Star Trek" may work as an aspect. - A casual, large numbers, viewer would pick up on that. But even so? It'd got to be one of the smaller straws.
Unlikeable or forgettable characters, that'd have an influence.
Overly complicated timey-wimey plots that place too much emphasis on the plot. Doctor Who gets away with it because, ultimately, in Who, the plot is meaningless (often literally), it just drives the character interactions. I think that possibly, this is one of the biggest issues the show had.
The reimagined Battlestar Galactica was a phenomenal success and it ended up having a ridiculously complicated timey wimey plot, much like Enterprise. The difference was, it had compelling, interesting characters that brought people back time and time and time again.
I think that is what will end up being the make-or-break for Discovery (outside of the US and Canada anyway).
That much OCD isn't good for anything. Especially with trek. You have the old schoolers (who hate anything that wasn't original series), you have the "prime timeline" fans, who hate anything that isn't original "canon" timeline set by the series/movies before JJ got involved. You have the "Kelvin timeline" fans, then you have the fans of the individual shows, who hate the other shows because they "got it wrong".
Then you have people who watch it because of spaceships and pew-pew ...
(Original/TNG had a more utopian future, where humans had moved away from being the petty nationalistic warlike monkeys. DS9 showed that we may have moved away from it, but we are still capable of laying down the smack when required. Voyager showed that ... whatever ... boobs and skintight costumes can hide a multitude of sins - and enterpise picked up on that?)
Do you want star trek wars? Because that's how you get star trek wars. And we all know how that'll end.
As for continuity and timelines ... With the amount of time travel shenanigans going on with the 4 series and movies, the "prime" timeline probably resembles a slice of swiss cheese with the amount of holes left in it.
Compel wrote: I think accrediting Enterprises general failure to internet fan rage
I think it was an element. The primary and foremost reason I think is that Enterprise just wasn't very good. Especially on the heels of DS9 and Voyager, it hit all the wrong notes and had a much less engaging cast. The stories were bland most of the time, and by the time they started improving the show had already bleed off so many viewers and that's where fans come into play. Fan love can keep mediocre things alive long enough to find their footing. Just look at Firefly. Horrible show, just horrible, but the fans kept the dream alive long enough for a pretty good movie to come out of it
Enterprise got hit hard with this, because almost every other episode when it was first airing there were people screaming over the internet about how "this is a retcon" or "that can't be canon" and "this is ruining the continuity." Never mind that they were all obsessing over tiny details, some so tiny they constituted being made up by fans more than anything. The fan base tore Enterprise apart as much as as well as the inevitable problem of "this takes place before TOS but it looks so much more advanced" problem that comes from a 30 year gap in production and a better budget. Add on top that even accounting for most Star Trek shows having mediocre first seasons Enterprises first season was bad.
Lucky it all turned out to be a holodeck program no?
Now we need the next Abrams-Verse film to end with wtih Obrien and Bashier saying 'Computer end program'.
Me too, but you don't have to look far to find the fan base tearing itself apart over petty details where the JJverse is concerned. I think fan abandonment actually hurt Beyond at the box office.
On a recent flight I continued my labored effort to watch all of Star Trek: Enterprise with an episode about the crew having shore leave on Risa. The remainder of the flight I watched the sun set. The later half of the flight was vastly more entertaining.
Sorry for the necro, but this thread inspired me to download the show for watching when I got a chance (2 young children and a fulltime job don't leave a lot of time) to see what all the fuss was about.
So I've watched most of the show during my last offshore trip, and frankly I quite enjoyed it. It's no DS9, B5, Stargate or Farscape (my uncontested #1 scifi show) but it's enjoyable enough.
But then, as with Star Wars, I don't watch shows like this to over-analyse every little detail in them to death. It's escapism, pure and simple, just like almost all of Trek, and I don't need deep philosophical meaning in that all the time.
Everyone (and I) who worked on that show thanks you. I was only an indentured peon in the prop-shop, but it counts. I got to handle Claudia Black's stunt guns.
Everyone (and I) who worked on that show thanks you. I was only an indentured peon in the prop-shop, but it counts. I got to handle Claudia Black's stunt guns.
It was a good show - most enjoyable - although I thought Raelee Hill was hotter as Sikozu
Everyone (and I) who worked on that show thanks you. I was only an indentured peon in the prop-shop, but it counts. I got to handle Claudia Black's stunt guns.
[Bows down in adoration]
"We're not worthy! We're not worthy!"
Wow.
I managed to invest in the absolutely gorgeous Farscape Universe boxed set (which includes The Peacekeeper Wars!) and it's the best DVD set that I've ever purchased. Even better than my Bladerunner tin with all 37 versions of the film.
Everyone (and I) who worked on that show thanks you. I was only an indentured peon in the prop-shop, but it counts. I got to handle Claudia Black's stunt guns.
It was a good show - most enjoyable - although I thought Raelee Hill was hotter as Sikozu
Oh, no doubts there ... but she wasn't ON the show yet when I worked on it. I have a firm spot for redheads.
A mate still has the mat that was the entry mat to the studio "Wipe your frelling feet!".
Everyone (and I) who worked on that show thanks you. I was only an indentured peon in the prop-shop, but it counts. I got to handle Claudia Black's stunt guns.
A little late, but that last sentence really requires a Butthead-style "uh huh huh-huh huh huh".
They should have researched actual explorers from the 1500s - 1700s. Things break down a lot. Food and water are a problem. Just surviving is difficult.
First contact with aliens is highly dangerous.have them having to fight their way back to the shuttle or out of the solar system.
It's a prequel, in a franchise whose mission is 'boldly go where no one has gone before' they're going back.
More of the same. While there's some change it still feels like a Star Trek show. Same tech, same directing style, same people standing around spouting terrible dialogue, just with more blue. So much blue...
Pissing off the dedicated fans. OK, so it's a prequel. A prequel with Ferengi and Borg showing up 200 years early. And technology that's more advanced than Kirk had 100 years later. And hand waving with a 'temporal cold war'. They even left off the Star Trek name for the first season or two.
Pissing off the casual viewers. While trying to break with 
Changing styles. The Battlestar Galactica reboot came along 2-3 years later and just blew this show away. I like space opera, I like it a lot. And I will settle for 'not that bad'. But only if 'really awesome' is not available. And once 'awesome' became an option 'not that bad' gets forgotten. Plus it came along just as DVDs and then steaming became ubiquitous. I can't remember the last time I made time in my schedule to watch a TV show (probably 
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