Star Trek: Enterprise -- A review

[fade]

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS OPINION. IT MAY DIFFER FROM YOURS, WHICH--WHILE PAINFUL--IS TOTALLY ACCEPTABLE. SOME NEGATIVE OPINIONS MAY OR MAY NOT BE EXPRESSED, BUT REALLY, THAT'S OKAY, TOO.

The theme song sucks.
There I said it. We all know it, now let's move on. Who knows what was going on behind the scenes with that decision. It happened.

I just watched the pilot for the first time. I have two words: nailed it. I couldn't care less about continuity breaches, by the way. Although given the fact that the villain revealed in the very first scene is temporal, doesn't that make for an excuse of sorts? It's better than a whiny teenager pounding on the walls of reality.

I really thought they hit a lot of points lacking in the older shows. The set designers and costumers did an excellent job connecting 2001 with the year in which the show is set. I especially like the restlessness with which the humans view the Vulcans. For all the griping about continuity (which usually goes "BLAH BLAH BLAH TRANSPORTERS BLAH BLAH") Enterprise got some things correct that other shows and movies seemed to get wrong. It was nice to see right in the pilot the acknowledgement that Vulcans have emotions, they just suppress them. We even have the ambassador raising his voice, and T'Pol showing gratitude. So many other writers seem to think they don't have them at all. It's nice to see the Captain have flaws, too. And character growth, which in TNG seemed to be limited to Data and Worf.

Humans having libidos, aliens being interested in humans rather than just the other way around. Non-sterile alien environments, acknowledgement of multiple cultures and languages on alien worlds, etc... all in the pilot.

Now the negatives.

In TOS and TNG and DS9 and even VOY, humans kick ass. Our tech is awesome. It's actually a breath of fresh air compared to most scifis where we suck. ENT does go back to the humans suck paradigm a bit too much. The Vulcans went from being benevolent big brothers to assholes. While it was nice to see the equivalent of marines again, they seem to suck at combat. Tucker is smart, yet dumb as a brick. Oh. And the acting. It's as though the director said, "be as over the top about EVERY emotional reaction as possible". Geez if this is the way humans act in the future, no wonder Vulcans think we're whiny babies.

 

[@Li3n]

Hey, i liked the theme song...

Then after a while i realised that this wasn't just some new show with the Quantum Leap guy but also a Star Trek show and went WHAT, WHY WOULD ANYONE USE THAT SONG FOR STAR TREK?

And imo the show lacked focus at first and then put it's focus on a rather annoying plot... then it actually got better (tholians and mirror universes, augments etc.) and was cancelled.

 

[GasBandit]

I have to say I enjoyed Enterprise, and was surprised to do so. Yes, despite Scott Bakula SEETHING FURY ON ELEVEN every time he stubs his toe and Spandex Spockette losing control of her emotions literally every other episode, I found the overarching, driven continuity a welcome addition to trek storytelling.

I have a hard time watching TOS, you see. And it wasn't until Enterprise came along that I figured out why - there was NO character development over the course of TOS's 70-someodd episodes. Maybe I've just been spoiled by B5 and Firefly (which got more engrossing storytelling done in it's single abbreviated season than all of Trekdom compiled has yet to achieve) and the like, but it always irked me that no matter the trials, tribulations and epiphanies experienced by the crew of NCC-1701, the end credits were a big noisy musical reset button. Nobody grew, or learned, or changed - hell, "Devil in the Dark" (the episode with the Hortas) was one of the later episodes, and in it Spock and McCoy are STILL experiencing problems learning how to work together!

Now, maybe the temporal cold war was a great big eyeroll, but it was no more ridiculous than a lot of Trek canon. Remember Gary Seven? Remember how in the episode where everybody got space-virus-drunk, they got away by kick-starting the engines or something and it blew them back in time 3 days? Remember the freakin "gravity slingshot?"

Well, I didn't mean for this post to turn into a gripe about the Original Series... my point is, I liked Enterprise better than TOS. And better than Voyager (I couldn't go a SINGLE episode of voyager without yelling OH COME ON at my TV for the sheer ridiculousness)... Maybe not quite as good as TNG or DS9, but definitely an enjoyable show with (mostly) good characters that learn and grow and change in understandable ways over the course of the four seasons.

 

[fade]

Yeah, it wasn't just TOS, either. Picard, Riker, Troi, and Crusher rarely evolved either. It may seem silly, but one of the things that turned me off to VOY was Janeway's voice. I found it grating and condescending. It was like the reflection of a lamp on the TV screen. It's small and relatively innocuous, but it catches your eye, and eventually it's all you can see.

TOS is a product of its time, and I think you have to watch it that way. I agree that it can be unappealing. If you read the scripts, though, they're actually beautifully written. It's a shame they were hampered by hammy acting and bad FX and 1960s tv conventions. I used to log into a UNIX server that used the TOS fortune as its MOTD, and it was always really well done.

 

[Jay]

Oh yeah!

I probably watched Enterprise about 4-5 times now and found it to be a pretty damn decent series. NOT THE BEST but hey... very nice despite it flaws. Got really good in the last few seasons and quite frankly, Star Trek fans should kindly STFU about the slow start... it took 5 seasons to get the WELL LOVED DS9 going.

And the best part? The only Star Trek series my woman actually liked.

 

[AshburnerX]

Watch SFDebris channel on Youtube and pick a review for just about any episode of Enterprise. He can explain my seething hatred for Enterprise far better than I ever could. Here's a short list.

- Archer is inconsistent between episodes shown a week apart, making him appear to be bipolar or psychotic. This is not because of character growth but lazy writing.
- Archer proves time and time again why he's not fit for duty.
- Dr. Phlox believes that "nature" is sentient and it makes him feel justified to watch a species die out so a less advance species might reach "it's full potential". This is essentially genocide, as he HAS a cure for the problem.
- That same episode basically demonstrates why the Prime Directive is bullshit to begin with, at least in this situation. (This is a must watch video. Seriously, it's great.)
- When the show DID start getting good, it was canceled because the fans just didn't come back.

As for Voyager, I can boil it down to about 5 reasons.

- No one was allowed to disagree with Janeway because the execs thought no one would believe a female captain unless she was always right.
- Chakotay was never allowed to take charge at all, despite being more experience than Janeway and having the loyalty of almost half the crew.
- Jerry Ryan joining the cast because she was sleeping with one of the execs. This made her the primary focus in the later seasons and while she was decent, she didn't deserve to steal the show.
- Nelix never being allowed to show off his skills, despite living alone on the frontier for years. Making him comic relief was a stupid move.
- Threshold. Just... Threshold.

 

[GasBandit]

Watch SFDebris channel on Youtube and pick a review for just about any episode of Enterprise. He can explain my seething hatred for Enterprise far better than I ever could. Here's a short list.

- Archer is inconsistent between episodes shown a week apart, making him appear to be bipolar or psychotic. This is not because of character growth but lazy writing.
- Archer proves time and time again why he's not fit for duty.
- Dr. Phlox believes that "nature" is sentient and it makes him feel justified to watch a species die out so a less advance species might reach "it's full potential". This is essentially genocide, as he HAS a cure for the problem.
- That same episode basically demonstrates why the Prime Directive is bullshit to begin with, at least in this situation. (This is a must watch video. Seriously, it's great.)
- When the show DID start getting good, it was canceled because the fans just didn't come back.

Meh, if you don't like the prime directive, you don't like the prime directive. I will admit there were some skip-worthy episodes in Enterprise, but I can easily counter with the first 2 seasons of TNG, about half of which were groan-inducingly AWFUL with absolutely no redeeming features whatsoever.

As for Voyager, I can boil it down to about 5 reasons.

- No one was allowed to disagree with Janeway because the execs thought no one would believe a female captain unless she was always right.
- Chakotay was never allowed to take charge at all, despite being more experience than Janeway and having the loyalty of almost half the crew.
- Jerry Ryan joining the cast because she was sleeping with one of the execs. This made her the primary focus in the later seasons and while she was decent, she didn't deserve to steal the show.
- Nelix never being allowed to show off his skills, despite living alone on the frontier for years. Making him comic relief was a stupid move.
- Threshold. Just... Threshold.

Not sure I follow you on Janeway, seems like they had a mutiny a week on that series for a while. Hell, even Tuvok turned on her once.

And frankly, Jeri Ryan was the only reason to watch voyager. And yes, that's saying something about how bad voyager was. It did make me guffaw how they seemed to find a similarly tight and perfectly proportioned bodysuit for T'Pol in Enterprise though.

Threshold was bad, but the cherry on the top of this big shit cake was Endgame (the series finale). Oh look there's earth ROLL CREDITS QUICK BEFORE ANY LINGERING QUESTIONS ARE ANSWERED!

 

[AshburnerX]

And frankly, Jeri Ryan was the only reason to watch voyager. And yes, that's saying something about how bad voyager was. It did make me guffaw how they seemed to find a similarly tight and perfectly proportioned bodysuit for T'Pol in Enterprise though.

I'd say that anything Robert Picardo (The Doctor) did on that show was fantastic though. He was definitely the best written character... then again, he was one of only three or four that got actual character development.

Threshold was bad, but the cherry on the top of this big shit cake was Endgame (the series finale). Oh look there's earth ROLL CREDITS QUICK BEFORE ANY LINGERING QUESTIONS ARE ANSWERED!

You know what really irked me? That after all the horrible, terrible things Janeway unleashed on the Delta Quadrant, in the next Star Trek movie she had been made an Admiral. That woman should have been court martial-ed, if not outright thrown in jail. I may not agree with the Prime Directive all the time, but she violated it AND the Temporal Prime Directive more times than Picard ever did and often for worse reasons, as well as gave the Undine borg nanoprobe weapon information (which incidentally started the war in Star Trek Online).

 

[SpecialKO]

Despite its theme song, Enterprise was awesome for about 1 season. Then it spent about half a season getting a bit "meh", then it spent about a season and a half being really, really awful.

Then it got awesome again for most of the 4th season before it got canceled and had a shit series finale.

 

[fade]

Watch SFDebris channel on Youtube and pick a review for just about any episode of Enterprise. He can explain my seething hatred for Enterprise far better than I ever could. Here's a short list.

- Archer is inconsistent between episodes shown a week apart, making him appear to be bipolar or psychotic. This is not because of character growth but lazy writing.
- Archer proves time and time again why he's not fit for duty.
- Dr. Phlox believes that "nature" is sentient and it makes him feel justified to watch a species die out so a less advance species might reach "it's full potential". This is essentially genocide, as he HAS a cure for the problem.
- That same episode basically demonstrates why the Prime Directive is bullshit to begin with, at least in this situation. (This is a must watch video. Seriously, it's great.)
- When the show DID start getting good, it was canceled because the fans just didn't come back.

I have to agree with GasBandit on these. If you call these out (which are of course worthy of being called out) then you have to do it for all Trek, not just ENT. There are easily as many stupid blunders in TNG. The cure vs. prime directive thing gets debated at least once in every Trek medium. When it comes down to it, all Treks border on corny by their very nature, and most cross strongly into corny territory at least once.

 

[phil]

I never really gave enterprise much of a try. When it first came on I'd try to sit down and watch it but always ended up asleep. Recently I watched an episode but it was pretty shitty. Something about hot-chich vulcan being stranded in some 1960s small town america. The highlight was when she was silhouetted behind a cloth and naked (on what must have been a cold day). I might try to go back and watch a bit but it's not high on my priority list.

One thing I want to mention on, is the idea that TOS had no character development. Now, I won't argue that it did, in fact, have development because honestly it didn't. What I will say though is that character development wasn't really the point of TOS. I view TOS kind of in the same vein as The Twilight Zone. It's not so much about the who as it is the what. It's not about how Spock and Kirk are going to interact with one another and hash out their differences, but about a doomsday device that threatens to consume the known universe. Personally I liked that more than any episode where Data or 7 of 9 learned something new about what it is to be human.

Personally, if there is ever going to be a new series, I'd like it to focus more on those aspects again. That's not to say that character development isn't nice and adds wonders to the series.