Giving Enterprise a second chance

TheDoctor said:

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I'm glad you guys enjoyed it (though I'm having a hard time believing anybody could say "It's up there with TNG" with a straight face)...

Different strokes for different folks. The Next Generation never really impressed me, so I thought Enterprise was a better series overall.

TheDoctor said:

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To be perfectly frank, the show was poorly acted and written, it had NO direction (the first two seasons were completely direction-less, the third season had an over-arching plot, and the fourth season seemed like they were trying to apologize to 'fans'), and was poorly led (B&B - I'm looking at you...).

Interesting that you would describe the show as having "no direction" considering the original premise, that of space exploration, was essentially, "Just go cruise around and see what you can find." But, yeah, the third season story arc got monotonous, and the fourth season was clearly a shallow attempt to boost ratings.

TheDoctor said:

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No, I think Enterprise was understood quite well: It was Paramount's "*expletive deleted* - you" to the fans. They stated from the beginning that it "wasn't Star Trek for the fans" - this was actually said by the producers and shown by (A) Not having "Star Trek" in the title...

I'd never before heard that the show "wasn't Star Trek for the fans," so I can't comment on that. But the show was officially called Star Trek: Enterprise, so it did have Star Trek in the title.

I think Enterprise's biggest problem was that the idea of "going back to the beginning" was an interesting notion, but it wasn't executed particularly well. The equation I make is that it was like being a NASCAR or Formula One racing fan being forced to watch 1930s-era auto racing when the cars weren't nearly as fast--initially interesting, but not particularly exciting by comparison.

Zombie_61 said:

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I'd never before heard that the show "wasn't Star Trek for the fans," so I can't comment on that. But the show was officially called Star Trek: Enterprise, so it did have Star Trek in the title.

I think Enterprise's biggest problem was that the idea of "going back to the beginning" was an interesting notion, but it wasn't executed particularly well. The equation I make is that it was like being a NASCAR or Formula One racing fan being forced to watch 1930s-era auto racing when the cars weren't nearly as fast--initially interesting, but not particularly exciting by comparison.

Actually, the show wasn't called "Star Trek: Enterprise" until the third season. The first two seasons it was "Enterprise" - this was after realizing that "Wow...we probably shouldn't have purposely tried to alienate the base fans."

I'll dig up a link on the "not for fans" bit.

For the most part I liked it, but I was definitely getting tired of the whole xindi thing. I absolutely loved Jeffery Combs as Commander Shran. If he showed up I knew it was going to be a good episode. Of the various Star Trek series he was one of my favorite characters.

TheDoctor said:

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Actually, the show wasn't called "Star Trek: Enterprise" until the third season. The first two seasons it was "Enterprise"...

I didn't know that; I'd always heard it (or read it) referred to as "Star Trek: Enterprise". Thanks for setting me straight!

It seems to me that no matter what you think of Enterprise compared to the other Trek series, it's still Star Trek and therefore loads better than most Sci-Fi stuff out there. You'd be hard-pressed to find a more thoroughly fleshed-out world than Star Trek, and that, in itself is still quite a unique and amazing thing.

Zombie_61 said:

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I didn't know that; I'd always heard it (or read it) referred to as "Star Trek: Enterprise". Thanks for setting me straight!

Fans may have referred to it as Star Trek: Enterprise before the official name change, I honestly don't remember now. Initially it was just "Enterprise" to try and rope in viewers who might turn their noses at the "Star Trek" moniker. That sure worked well for them given the season 3 and 4 retools.

Eventually I'll get around to a Star Trek marathon on Netflix and will give this show another go. Hopefully it won't be as disappointing as I remember. I may have to not watch it immediately after I finish Voyager just so I don't notice how many times they completely ripped of Voyager's ripping off TNG and DS9.

0neiros said:

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TOS ships wussy? Dude the TOS Constitution class ships were top of the line, and were so badass the Klingons called them Federation Battle Cruisers, and didn't want to go one on one with them.

Battle cruiser is really an overused and misused term, all a battle cruiser is is an upgunned cruiser, it was a concept used during WW II where battleship guns were mounted to what amounted to a cruiser hull the idea being that it could outgun any ship up to another cruiser and what it couldn't outgun (like a battleship) it would outrun because it only had a cruiser's armor making it lighter and faster; it was also a means of getting around the Washington Naval Treaty of the 30's that limited the size and weight of naval warships. In practice that didn't work out so well and battle cruisers tended to get mauled by battleships which they didn't always manage to outrun. So whenever I hear somebody call something a battle cruiser I can't help but to be unimpressed and think of a ship with big guns and light armor.

Angelus Lupus said:

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Also too many brand new species that we never saw in later eras, and the uniforms and overall design seemed to want to echo the TNG era rather than TOS.

I thought that the uniforms were one of the better aspects of Enterprise, given where they are in time the uniforms made sense. Enteprise was set not so far into the future that Starfleet wouldn't be using jumpsuits for uniforms, I see it more of as a tie to naval work uniforms, esp. onboard subs, of today more than an echo of TNG.

One of the things that makes the least sense is that the Officers use the same uniforms as enlisted. While Enterprise uniforms make sense for enlisted, Senior Officers should have more formal uniforms. Trek 2 - 6 actually made more sense in this area than any other Trek (though there were still too many officers).

TheDoctor said:

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One of the things that makes the least sense is that the Officers use the same uniforms as enlisted. While Enterprise uniforms make sense for enlisted, Senior Officers should have more formal uniforms. Trek 2 - 6 actually made more sense in this area than any other Trek (though there were still too many officers).

It depends on how you look at things and at which part of the Navy. Onboard subs all hands wear the same blue jumpsuits with only rank insignia and gold and silver "dolphins" to distinguish enlisted from officer. With the adoption of the new Navy Work Uniform (NWU), the blue digital camo seen in Battleship, the surface fleet of the USN is also going with a common uniform for all hands and the only place in the USN you'll probably see khakis being worn by officers and Chiefs will probably be land commands even that is probably questionable.

So basically Enterprise was mimicking the way things are done on US subs and were ahead of their time in regards to the surface fleet. When you think of it, a starship is not all that different from a sub so it would make sense for Starfleet to use a common uniform for all hands early on. You have to figure that at this stage in its development Starfleet is deriving its traditions, protocols, and uniforms from both the world's navies along with their space agencies, in particular the USN and NASA so it wouldn't be that unreasonable to believe that it would take them another 100 years or so to change things and come up with more elaborate uniforms and separate styles for enlisted and officers.

Riceball said:

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I thought that the uniforms were one of the better aspects of Enterprise, given where they are in time the uniforms made sense. Enteprise was set not so far into the future that Starfleet wouldn't be using jumpsuits for uniforms, I see it more of as a tie to naval work uniforms, esp. onboard subs, of today more than an echo of TNG.

I'm not criticising the jumpsuits, I actually liked that idea. They were functional but distinctly Earth tech, complete with pockets and visible zippers (no magical 23rd century invisible closings). It's more the fact that the division colour was on the shoulders in the same way that it was for DS9 and voyager, in the same shape as it was for everything from TNG to Nemesis. Add to that the rank pips in the same style as TNG onwards. It was just another example of them trying to echo the design of the later shows rather than TOS.

Angelus Lupus said:

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I'm not criticising the jumpsuits, I actually liked that idea. They were functional but distinctly Earth tech, complete with pockets and visible zippers (no magical 23rd century invisible closings). It's more the fact that the division colour was on the shoulders in the same way that it was for DS9 and voyager, in the same shape as it was for everything from TNG to Nemesis. Add to that the rank pips in the same style as TNG onwards. It was just another example of them trying to echo the design of the later shows rather than TOS.

I never had much of a problem with that but I see where you're coming from. But the division colors done with just piping and not with a whole swath of color like in the various TNG era uniforms. I'm not really sure that there was much more they could have done to make the uniforms more TOS like rather than TNG like. I really don't think that making the entire jumpsuits different colors would have looked all that good and making the entire shoulder colored, instead of just some colored piping, would have just made the uniforms more TNG like as would have making their shirts colored.

I liked Enterprise from the very beginning until the last episode. My biggest problem with the last episode was that Troi ends up throwing a spoiler out early in the show. We find out that Trip dies before he dies. That's what sucked for me. It was like watching Transformers The Movie when I was a kid and someone out in the lobby said that Optimus Prime died before I had a chance to even see the film start. If Trip had died without it being spoiled I might have had less problems with it. Can you imagine if we had been told Spock was going to die in STII before we saw him die?

On some levels I didn't mind the crossover with TNG, but it would have been better if it had been a bit more subtle.

After seeing Prometheus and seeing this forum, I guess I should give Enterprise a bit of credit that I totally respected.

Tholians. My favorite aliens in the entire franchise were handled very well. For a franchise that's been known to just put some simple prosthetic on someone's face and declare that alien enough, seeing a Tholian as a very non-humanoid like creature was probably the best contribution Enterprise made to Star Trek. They didn't take the look of the Tholian and go the cheap route by saying it was just some helmet that a very human looking alien wore. What we saw in TOS was it's genuine face!

Hmm. Maybe I should give Enterprise a second chance too.

Alan Cross said:

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Hmm. Maybe I should give Enterprise a second chance too.

"You can't be afraid of the wind....
Take us to warp four."

PotionMistress said:

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It seems to me that no matter what you think of Enterprise compared to the other Trek series, it's still Star Trek and therefore loads better than most Sci-Fi stuff out there. You'd be hard-pressed to find a more thoroughly fleshed-out world than Star Trek, and that, in itself is still quite a unique and amazing thing.

When we were trying to save it, someone made a great vid that made that point without a spoken word...

SaveEnterprise 2005 - YouTube

Wickerness said:

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Can you imagine if we had been told Spock was going to die in STII before we saw him die?

I don't have to imagine it; that was one of the worst kept pre-release movie secrets in the history of filmmaking.

Zombie_61 said:

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I don't have to imagine it; that was one of the worst kept pre-release movie secrets in the history of filmmaking.

Yup. I was going to say we "did" know he was going to die, as it was leaked early on (and the rumour to this day is Gene Roddenberry leaked it himself for being disgruntled with how the franchise was being handled).

However when the leak went public, the Director/producers/writers did a clever thing- they added the Kobayashi Maru sequence at the beginning of the film. In that sequence Spock "dies" (along with McCoy, Uhura and Sulu) however we quickly find out it was all a simulation.

So the audience was lead to believe that they were "tricked" about the rumour that Spock dies- he "died" but it was play acting for a Starfleet test. I'm sure most of the audience didn't want Spock to die, and didn't want to believe the rumour anyway.

So now that the rumour was put to rest at the start of the film (Spock isn't dead after all), the audience could sit back, relax and enjoy the movie...

Only to be taken completely by surprise at Spock's "real" death at the end of the film.

The ruse worked pretty well; I saw the film in the theater in '82 (when I was 12) and I balled my flipping eyes out afterward!


Kevin

Zombie_61 said:

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I don't have to imagine it; that was one of the worst kept pre-release movie secrets in the history of filmmaking.

Well I meant to be told in the movie by some character from the future or some other crap. It would have really cheapened his death.
I didn't hear the rumors when I saw it, but I was only 10 at the time. It was a lot easier to miss those rumors back then which was way before the internet. Now it's difficult not to accidentally read the spoiler.

Wickerness said:

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Well I meant to be told in the movie by some character from the future or some other crap. It would have really cheapened his death.
I didn't hear the rumors when I saw it, but I was only 10 at the time. It was a lot easier to miss those rumors back then which was way before the internet. Now it's difficult not to accidentally read the spoiler.

Ah, I understand now. Yeah, about 99% of the time they can't quite pull that off, especially when it's a character as well known as Kirk or Spock.

Ok, so I went back and was watching some "Enterprise," and went looking for a few things on Memory Alpha. Learned something new there.

I always liked the Temporal Cold War story idea, and when I looked up the "shadowy future guy" I was VERY surprised to learn that, according to Brannon Braga, he was supposed to be...


(drum roll)


Jonathan Archer.

I'm really sorry they were never able to do anything with that. The "how" would have been interesting, and the reveal would be almost a "Face of Boe" level of cool.

SmilingOtter said:

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I always liked the Temporal Cold War story idea, and when I looked up the "shadowy future guy" I was VERY surprised to learn that, according to Brannon Braga, he was supposed to be...


(drum roll)


Jonathan Archer.

Seriously? Wow - that makes NO sense what-so-ever (which, I guess, is par for Enterprise). Wasn't it established that shadow future guy was Romulan? Maybe I'm jus remembering wrong.

I got really tired of the temporal cold war myself. It was a cool concept but got old REALLY quick for me. I prefer to leave the time travel to Doctor Who.