Not even, if I am on my deathbed…
Meaning you don't consider ENT as canon?
Best Man, Jeyl. Manly tears had been shed.
Kind of with him on that one. I pondered about getting the complete Enterprise set on Blu-Ray, but realized that I don't hate money nearly that much.
You ain't telling me, what I have to like or not.
We don't get to selectively decide that ENT didn't exist. It's prime timeline canon, end of story. Which means that if Discovery is pre-TOS, it's going to be stuck with all of that baggage. Which is why I really hope it isn't.
This, so much this and more. ENT was promising, if they had changed:
1. Respect of continuity
2. No introduction new species like Dr. Phlox (he could have been all the ones we knew, yes I would even take a Tellarite aka Pigs in Space)
3. Technological cop out: The introduction of too many "familiar technology" that has the same name in disguise. See point 1.: It would have been Laser Blasters or even a plasma weapon, that would be much much weaker than a Phaser. The introduction of the transporter, "Phase Pistol", Universal Translator, etc. etc.
While Star Trek: Enterprise was in development, Executive Producer Brannon Braga initially wanted there to be no transporter on the Enterprise NX-01, though this idea was disputed by executives at Paramount. "[He] thought transporter technology is in the future," explained André Bormanis, regarding Braga's viewpoint. "Well [...] this became a point of contention with, you know, the powers that be. The compromise we reached was that, okay, it's got a transporter, but it's experimental technology, and they don't really want to use it unless they absolutely have to. And we thought, in the 22nd century, it ought to be more challenging, or better yet, let's not introduce it in the first season. Maybe the second season, they'll upgrade the ship." ("To Boldly Go: Launching Enterprise, Part I: Countdown", ENT Season 1 Blu-ray special features)
4. Which leads us to this point: The meddling executives. There's a saying we have in germany: "If you don't have a clue about the thing, simply STFU"
5. Introduction of known species, which are contradicting continuity. Ferengi, Borg, you name it. It was unecessary and irritating, despite the non-mentioning of their name.
6. The name "Enterprise" and the Registry. Why in all the world do you have to besmirch the good name with such a crap series. You could have picked a lot of names, just because the Enterprise is well know, doesn't work out in a set prequel, which massively contradicts, yet again, point 1. You could have named it "Yorktown", "Liberty", "Constellation", "Exeter", etc. etc. The registery as Inquisitor Peregrinus pointed out condradicts with the established canon. Could have done better.
7. T&A and nude upsell. I really pity the actresses being sold soley on the T&A factor, while Jeri's 7of9 did evolve, poor Jolene had to be the T&A token. If you start to bring nude scenes for the sake of itself or just to stir the pot, you gotta have a problem with story writing and you shouldn't be appointed as a exec producer.
8. While ENT was a child of it's time (we remember too well 9/11), the Xindi arc was the most boring one, including the not resolved stupid temporal cold war.
9. Color codes. It's surely a nod, but that doesn't really work and surely not like in the similar fashion design style of TNG. Should have been more like today's NASA, Coverall and nametags.
10. Flat characters like Mayweather… what a waste of potential. You don't have a cast, if you don't make the best use of them.
11. Ship design: too similar to Akira. A more sophisticated version of the ring ship or very primitive design precursoring the Deadalus class.
Except that that just doesn't work. Brannon Braga famously said in an interview, when called on his not, ah... feeling tied to pre-existing story points, "Continuity is for wussies". That is, he didn't let little things like what had been established in prior episodes or series get in the way of the story he wanted to tell. When they were making Generations, when he wanted Scotty there for the launch of the Enterprise-B along with Kirk, where Kirk is lost and presumed dead... It was pointed out to him that when Scotty had shown up on TNG, chronologically after that event, he thought Kirk was still alive (because he didn't know how much time had passed). Braga said, more or less, "So what? That was one episode. Who's going to pay attention to that?" For First Contact, he wanted Zefram Cochrane to be a woman, so as to be Picard's love interest. It was again pointed out to him that we'd met Cochrane before, in TOS, and he was definitely male. Braga said, "That was one episode, thirty years ago. Who's even going to remember that?" But wiser heads prevailed that time. He doesn't respect the setting/I.P. He doesn't respect the audience...
...And with Enterprise, he doesn't respect his own damn canon. Never mind how the tech doesn't fit the period. Never mind how it screws up design and tech continuity with both Klingons and Romulans. Never mind how T'Pol's breasts would never have evolved on a high-gravity world like Vulcan. Never mind how the Temporal Cold War was a bad idea largely due to how time travel in general is a bad idea (it never gets done right, because if it were, there's no dramatic tension). He had just given us the U.S.S. Dauntless, NX-01-A, over in Voyager. Granted it turned out to be a fake, none of the Academy-educated Starfleet crew even blinked at the name and registry. No one said "Hey -- wasn't NX-01 the Enterprise?" or "Was that the name of the first Starfleet ship?" or anything like that.
That's excepting that even the revised TMP still has the ringship between the space shuttle Enterprise and the Constitution-class Enterprise. Revised timeline, that ship was in service as a transport and exploration craft from about the early 22nd century (Starfleet -- the unified organization encompassing all Terran colonies -- was formed in the early 2130s... the ringship predates that by a little) to about the 2230s, in time for its successor to be chosen from the Constitution class then under development.
Enterprise the show, crap finale overlooked, only works as a preamble to the JJ-verse, no matter what Paramount's official stance is. And I will keep saying this until they frikkin' realize it. That finale can then be relegated to the same dumpster as "Threshold".
--Jonah