I've only seen bits and pieces of it and it always strucks me as a good show and I'd have loved to have seen them do another season where they give the ship the rest of it's parts as planned. I really liked that they got James Cromwell as Cochrane at the start and tied it in with other series in the universe with the ancestor Data's creator and even having Jonathan Frakes in it not just as a throw away but to tied it into an episode of Next Gen.
Problem is it just doesn't
work as a predecessor to TOS. The tech is way too advanced for that period, never mind continuity problems (those are par for the course with anything Brannon "Continuity is for wussies"* Braga does). Basically, for Enterprise to work, there'd have to be
massive technological progress in the 80 years following First Contact up until the founding of the Federation, then utter stagnation for the 80 years after that, then regular and steady progress from that point forward. I have a hard time with that.
[*
Direct quote, from an interview]
All the TOS races that they could have used and expanded the canon of, and they do stupid things like use the Ferengi or Borg, and introduce the Romulans far too early. And as for how many brand-new never-before-seen (and not seen later in TNG) species... well...
Supposedly, if you watch braga on the extras, he says roddenberry's mantra was 'don't look back, go new...' that, and braga never really was a fan of TOS. probably where some of the resentment to manny coto comes in, when fans think season 4 the show got a whole lot better. braga is apparently very proud of the xindi arc.
Wonderful example of Braga hearing the words, but missing the point. Exploring the known races (or even the barely-glimpsed ones from the TOS films) isn't necessarily "going backwards" if it tells us stuff we didn't know before. It's only "going backwards" if it goes over the same story ground prior series did. There is
so much we don't know about those species... and I don't really feel Enterprise did a good job of exploring them at all. Especially considering they gave the Andorians ears in addition to the antennæ. *sigh* -_- Gotta keep reminding myself, "Continuity is for wussies"...
Aforementioned "boobs of Vulcan" and the decon-gel scenes were just insulting to the audience. Kronos is a week away? Near-Earth space is full of inhabited systems? Don't get me started on the massive timeline change of the Xindi and their super-weapon.
The Explination for the decon scene was that there was alot of sex and intrigue in the TOS series. this was just an extension of that. but honestly, we all know why it was there..because seven of nine 'worked so well' in expanding the horny male audience.
As far as sexiness in TOS... *does a quick review of TOS* No... There really wasn't that much of it, beyond the "Theiss Titillation Theory" aspect of the costuming (covering things that are normally uncovered while uncovering things that are normally covered -- barring naughty bits). I don't really consider chicks in catsuits a worthy extrapolation of that. *shrug* Nor the softcore gel-rubbing scenes.
I always saw the founding of the Federation as an unfortunate reminder at how little Star Trek chose to involve the Federation throughout the course of the franchise. Everything was always about Starfleet, and Starfleet always had humans in charge. Enterprise, god help me, was the one Star Trek series that actually did something with the other members of the Federation that felt like it mattered. I really liked how it was handled! That shot of the Enterprise with a fleet of other alien ships that would soon become members of the Federation was a sight of what should have been, but continuing the series would almost indicate that union didn't last a month. Even Deep Space Nine, my favorite Trek series, only had Starfleet ships representing the Federation during the Dominion War. No Andorians, no Vulcans and no Tellarites. The only time Deep Space Nine even dealt directly with one of those races was an episode focused around making the Vulcans look like bullies in a game of baseball. Still waiting on Sisko to make good on his promise to bring the Bajorans into the Federation. Being in a white room shouldn't change anything!
As for the nearness of Klingon space and the matter of other Federation species... *sigh* This is one of the "trying to be both" things that bugs the bejeepers out of me. If this were "founding of the Federation" era stuff, as the temporal placement purports, then we shouldn't be meeting the Klingons for another 70 years or so. Over the course of the show, we should be
just encountering the Romulans (without ever learning what they look like) and fighting a war with them that ultimately ends up bringing the local species together from a loose trading alliance into an actual unified government. If it's the tech level and social situation we're shown in Enterprise, that would place it in the 2240s, we'd still be dealing with the "disastrous" (to quote Picard) First Contact with the Klingons a couple decades earlier, but not meeting them for the first time, and we'd've not really gotten an integrated Starfleet or agreeable Federation yet.
I wanted to see something of the getting to know the Andorians (without human ears), the Efrosians, the Caitians... Many of the cool species we saw in TOS and their films that we don't really know
anything about. I did
not want to see time travel stuff or much at all to do with the Vulcans. In TOS, they were still largely aloof and insular. In the films, they were still largely aloof and insular. In TNG. they were still largely aloof and insular. In DS9, they were still largely aloof and insular... I detect a trend. There's not much Enterprise could to with them that wouldn't violate that. I really, really would have loved to see Jolene as just about any species other than Vulcan. *sigh*
--Jonah
