Star Trek: Enterprise, anyone?

Why's that?

 

Two months ago I was channel surfing late at night around 1 am. I flip to a channel that is showing the very end of First Contact. I like First Contact so I pause. I see the Vulcan ship descend and the Vulcan steps out and does his "live long and prosper bit." I expect and actually see Zephran Cochran extend his hand in fellowship and then immediately return his hand to his coat, take out a shotgun and gun down the Vulcan. I shook my head not believing what I just saw. Then I see the whole group of humans rush the Vulcan ship, pillaging all the way. I exclaimed, "What the eff?" I was so confused. The opening credits for the episode were all about war and destruction...and I thought, dang what have I been missing the whole time I've not been watching Enterprise. I had no idea the Federation had been retconned to start out with such violence and bigotry.

I only later found out it was some end of season event. Still, I've never been as confused as I was that night.

 

That was one of those Mirror Universe episodes. Still, that was the Best. Teaser. Ever.

 

Second best Mirror-verse episode too. Possibly edges out the TOS one simply for the sheer fun they seemed to have making it.

And for Phlox's line. "Will you kindly die, please?"

 

Season 4 of Enterprise is currently airing on Australian TV!... At midnight. (up to about episode 7)

I have been watching them, having only seen about 3 or 4 episodes from the previous 3 seasons. The 3-part augment story-arc was clever but tried too hard to 'fill in' so called 'plot holes' which could have been left ambiguous, though it was a good excuse to have Brent Spinner!

 

Brent Spiner was the best thing about those episodes. I didn't really like those episodes, but if allowed for the Klingon arc to explain long-time confusion about the look of them later. I still haven't seen the last couple of episodes of the series, though I hope to if Paramount drops the price of the season sets like they have with the DS9 and Voyager sets.

 

Last scene of In a Mirror, Darkly II was great. Too bad we didn't get more of the AU.

 

I absolutely hated that mirrorverse stuff, but Twilight rocked!

 

I really liked the series opener. There were a few other season 1 episodes that i really liked as well. Unfortunitely there were several very forgetible episodes in there as well. Season 2 wasn't very good. Season 3 i really liked. Now that i've scene doctor Who, some of the stuff from season 3 and future tense a second season temporal cold war arc are a bit more interesting. My knee jerk reaction was that soem of it was just a bit of a rip off, but once i thought about it, it's like seeing a Dr. Who type situation from the non time travelers point of view. Season 4 was really awesome. to me, it did the job of being a star trek prequil.

 

I liked the first two seasons! Season three really turned me off with that shower scene, Similitude, and trellium addiction. I just didn't like it. However, teh Vulcan arc in Season 4 was really nice.

 

The trellium addiction was really bad.

 

Any more Enterprise fans?

 

Well I suppose not really. As someone who watched TNG religiously and even scheduled my college career around the daily reruns in the early 90s, I have NEVER just out and out ABANDONED a Trek series until I ran into Enterprise.

From the irrelevant temporal cold war to the unnecessary Xindi to the narcoleptic 2nd season and the outright and utter ignoramous THUD of the final episode, this series did nearly absolutely positively everything wrong. I have never felt so disconnected from a trek series in my life. The producers totally just screwed the entire idea over.

Now I could go on and on about everything I didnt like, but Ill just say that the two-part mirror universe episode is exactly how they SHOULD have been playing the entire series. They SHOULD have had the Romulian War instead of the Xindi War, they should have had LOCAL enemies, not a screwball shadow villain from the 99th century out to change the timeline. They had an entire untouched pre-Federation to play with, and didnt. Any goofing with time, any recycling of old villians, ANY reshuffling of trek continuity just to get out a cheap two-parter is all just proof positive the producers just did not trust their own source material. Just a darned waste.

 

For the interested, Enterprise is on SciFi right now until 11:00 PST.

 

The Xindi arc just killed Enterprise for me, but I watched it 'till the bitter end. I didn't hate it, but I would have preferred a post-Voyager show. Everyone had Prequel fever back then!

 

I held off commenting on Enterprise because the wounds from what was essentially the death of Trek in visual media was and is still kinda raw for me, but I think I can be impartial about commenting on Enterprise.

I think it was botched from the beginning. Too many plots and inconsistancies with what was already established by Roddenberry and incredibly Berman himself. The Klingons for instance did not have offical contact with humans until after the Federation was estabished. The Federation was formed in the aftermath of the Romulan/Earth war. I can understand why Berman might have wanted to avoid another war setting after doing the same with DS9, but if he was going to set Enterprise in this time frame, then he should have done it immediately after the war with the Romulans or sucked it up and gone through with showing us at the last few years of the war and then the setting up of the Federation afterwards. And don't get me started on the Xindi arch. I hated it much like everything else.

I thought the temporal cold war could have been something different, especially if perhaps it was eventually tied in with an established race (like maybe the Klingons or Romulanas for instance, which may have explained away the way to early Klingon/Earth contact starting with Broken Bow), but it was jettisoned too quickly in favor of the equally unpopular Xindi arch, which ultimately killed the series because it probably drove die - hard Trek fans out of Enterprise and unfortunately never returned for season four.

I think Season Four could have been a great turning point for Trek, but by then it was probably too late. Like I said before too many previous inconsistancies, and again the events of Season Three probably turned off many for good and Season Four just was not enough to lure lost fans back. I think if they had a Season Five (and the two - part ep that led into the finale was probably a set up for a Season four cliffhanger/Season Five resolution), things might have started turning around even more, leading to possibly an Earth/Romulan war and the formation of the Federation in that time frame. As it was, ultimately Enterprise will be even more forgotten and sacriligous to Trek fans as DS9 apparently is to Berman.

Here's hoping Abrams has better luck with Trek XI.

 

Actually, in the episode "First Contact", Picard only says that Starfleet made contact with the Klingons, not the Federation. As we clearly see in Enterprise, Starfleet was an Earth organization before the Federation was created. How is that an inconsistency?

Yes, Picard says that there was a violent incident, but we see just such a violent incident within a couple years. Considering the time scale involved, it's not too much of a stretch.

The Federation wasn't created until the final episode of Enterprise, and that was set several years after the rest of the series. How is that an inconsistency?

I wouldn't have done it myself, but I don't think it was as horrible as everyone made it out to be.

All in all, Enterprise wasn't a bad series. I just think that a lot of people had very different expectations for it, and it failed to live up to those.

Kimball Kinnison

 

Thankyou.

 

I agree with Juliet316 to a certain extent, in that the IDEA for Enterprise was really good, but that the execution was abysmal. The problem that I had was more with the look of Enterprise, than the story telling. I liked the Xindi Arc and I think if they had started with that, then Enterprise might be on the air, however, the look of the show was totally wrong. The thing with Trek is that the technology in one series is always slightly more advanced than in one before it. In TNG, the technology can be seen to advance from season to season, watch an episode from every season and you can see that the phasers and tricorders become smaller and sleeker looking from one season to the next. In addition to that there was the Enterprise itself, for a start it was WAY to small. Series starships in Star Trek are generally some of the bigger ships in Starfleet's inventory. The five Enterprises have generally been heavy cruisers, although the D and the E are full blown battleships, Voyager was basically a Destroyer and Defiant was basically a very heavily armed destroyer escort. Then there's Archer's Enterprise, which is so thin that it disappears if you try to look at it edge on and can only be seen from the top or the bottom.

 

Is it going too become as good as TNG,or Deep Space Nine?

Because if it doesent i dont have too many reasons too wach it.

 

I think a problem people don't realize, especially people who are fans of Star Trek, is that Star Trek no longer is the reflection on our society it once was. Good science fiction deals with our hopes, aspirations, and fears for the future. We are one century closer to the twenty third century, and things have changed.

I watched the first two and most of the third season of Enterprise. The Xendi storyline lacked any emotional punch. I would have thought the lack of Prime Directive sillyness would have created better storylines.