Star Trek: Enterprise

[FuzzyElf]

Story:

Set in the 22nd century, a hundred years before James T. Kirk helmed the famous starship of the same name, ENTERPRISE takes place in an era when interstellar travel is still in its infancy. Captain Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula) has assembled a crew of brave explorers to chart the galaxy on a revolutionary spacecraft: Enterprise NX-01. As the first human beings to venture into deep space, these pioneers will experience the wonder and mystery of the final frontier as they seek out new life and new civilizations.

In my opinion this series is very good because this is prequel to Star Trek The original series which was released at year 1966.

What do you think about this series?

[AJBopp]

It started good but later failed miserably. The Xindi saga episodes are decent episodes.

The Xindi episodes are where it really went off the rails, I thought. It started out with a suspect premise.

Let's test a proof of concept weapon weapon we can use to destroy the Earth ON THE ACTUAL TARGET which is halfway across the galaxy, thereby broadcasting our intentions, capabilities, and location. And before we have an actual working model developed, let alone tested.

I liked the show at first but hated that they never properly developed the Future Guy storyline and just kinda resolved it by throwing it away, and I really hated when it went into "save the Earth" mode instead of "take first steps toward interstellar exploration" mode.

[master of read]

forgettable mostly.

it did get across that this was the early days of starfleet, when humanity was barely a blip on the galactic radar, and a lot of things we are use to aren't there as much, if at all for the series.

the xindi arc was by far the best that the show got, what with the mysterious new enemy who hates humans for some reason, exploring an area of space that even the vulcans stayed away from and dealing with the first time earth came under alien attack.

but other than that, the show was, at best, bland and at worst, just awful. the crew was bland for the most part, archer himself wasn't much of a trailblazer as he should have been and a lot of the stories were forgettable. and then there were moments where they just kept hammering home that this was a prequel. like how they tried to explain why TOS klingons looked so different from TNG ones, which also include connections to both khan and data if you can believe it.

in the end, this could've been something great but it was just missed potential.

[Cyke]

It started good but later failed miserably. The Xindi saga episodes are decent episodes.

Honestly felt that it was the opposite. It was a jumbled mess early on with very little characterization (I was easily confused between Trip, Tucker, and Mayweather -- like, aside from their actual jobs, why were they even on board?) and tried too hard to be Voyager lite, which in turn was TNG lite. The Xindi episodes were an improvement because it gave them actual focus. And I thought season 4 was the best of it not just because it made much more intentional and narrative use of being a prequel, but that it was also a nice compromise between the standalone approach of S1/S2, and the serial nature of S3. But that rocky start was too rocky. It was a prequel for cynical reasons, and not because they were really interested in the era (otherwise, the ideas in S4 would have been there in S1).

With that said, as much as I dislike Enterprise, I do love how much it's integrated in both the JJ movies and Discovery, and moreso that spoilers:

the current arc in Discovery is a big multi-part sequel to Enterprise's "In A Mirror, Darkly"

end of spoilers.

And its series finale Terra Prime was a great way to end the series. Yep, that's what they did. They ended with Terra Prime.

[Zero Hunter]

I agree with Cyke. Those first 2 season were mostly a mess with the occasional good episode mixed in. The whole "Temporal Cold War" story line was just not good at all. I thought Xindi season was where the show started coming into its own. Season 3 and 4 were the best of the series.

[Powerboy]

I'm going against the trend. I thought it was okay sometimes but mostly pretty bad during the first couple of seasons when it's solution to boosting the ratings was to have Archer/ T'Pol bondage scenes and T'Pol shower scenes and when Berman didn't seem to know anything about Star Trek history and kept ignoring events and species that should have been significant and instead used the Ferengi and some sort of proto-borg.

But in the 3rd season, Berman brought in (Paramount forced him to bring in) a writer that actually knew Star Trek and we got the Orions and a number of species from that era and a great season-long arc and far better stories in the 3rd and 4th seasons. Alas, by then, most people had already stopped watching it was never able to get that audience back.

[Jokerz79]

I liked it from the start but felt it came in to it's own in the 3rd season and the 4th was one of my favorite seasons of Trek outside of the finale which was bad and Riker Fan Fiction IMO.

[SJNeal]

I started watching Trek with TNG's 4th season in 1991. I followed everything religiously until the end of Voyager, but refused to watch Enterprise out of some made up principle. Over this past holiday season, I had a lot of time off work and started watching on a whim. I'm almost done with S1, and so far it's... just ok.

I want to like it because it's Trek (and new to me!), but I have to remind myself to watch the next episode. It's not at all bingable like the rest of the series were/are.

[Powerboy]

I liked it from the start but felt it came in to it's own in the 3rd season and the 4th was one of my favorite seasons of Trek outside of the finale which was bad and Riker Fan Fiction IMO.

Yes, presenting it as a holodeck scenario on Picard's Enterprise made it fell like, well, a holodeck scenario and also like something that happened 200 years earlier which lacked any feeling of it's happening in the present.

[master of read]

Yes, presenting it as a holodeck scenario on Picard's Enterprise made it fell like, well, a holodeck scenario and also like something that happened 200 years earlier which lacked any feeling of it's happening in the present.

yeah and they had to squeeze it in to a major ep about a event that had a major impact on riker's career.

[Pinsir]

I enjoy it, its pretty standard Star Trek that you can put on the tv as you work or play video games.

As anyone would tell, the series went off-rail after 9/11, leading to the creation of the worst Star Trek episode of all time, the Chosen One. The plot of this episode is that a bunch of space zealots commandeer the Enterprise by blowing themselves up/ threatening too, in order to use the Enterprise to kill heretics. When they return home they discover that religious war had destroyed the planet though. The moral of this episode is literally "Muslims are going to kill us all," during an epoch mind you, when the Iraq War had already begun leading to the death of half a million people. Previously, bigotry in Star Trek usually manifests from naivety, but this episode was always intended to expressly smear a group of people.

[choptop]

I always thought it was pretty good never did get all the hate the show got.

[C_Miller]

My big issue with the show is that the characters weren't especially well conceived. It was the first show where it felt like they had a list of positions on the ship and just quickly created characters to fill those roles with one character trait. They developed over time, but they were very much blank slates at the beginning.

To me the show also suffered from similar issues to Voyager. By the time Enterprise came out, Star Trek had been on the air more or less uninterrupted since 1987 and it developed a very trademarked style of writing. For the first two years, it had forsaken the very interested concept it had to tell stories that could have been Next Generation episodes, or Voyager episodes, or the filler DS9 episodes. That was my issue with Voyager too. Interesting high concept pilot, then generic Trek for the rest of the season.

Admittedly, it did pick up with the Xindi stuff. I don't think that was perfect, but it was a breath of fresh air, giving Star Trek the first taste of innovation since DS9.

[sunofdarkchild]

I liked Enterprise when it first came out, but I lost interest during season 2 and looking back as an adult it wasn't good until the later seasons.

[nx01a]

My handle may be taken from a Voyager ship but I really enjoyed Enterprise, too.

Season 1: Enjoyable. Humans getting their first taste of deep space all on their own, working out human/Vulcan issues. Needed more time on Earth [maybe just one episode] to see exactly what 22nd C humanity was like.
Best Episode - Fallen Hero
Worst Episode - Acquisition/Rogue Planet/Oasis

Season 2: Spotty. Some absolutely horrid episodes plus many so-so ones, absolutely no sense of the exploration leading toward the Federation [not a Bolian or Betazoid in sight], and a continuation of late Trek shows shamelessly recycling old Trek plots.
Best Episode - Future Tense
Worst Episode - Vanishing Point/Precious Cargo/Dawn/Horizon

Season 3: Great. A real mission and direction finally, great serialized storytelling, well fleshed out antagonists, spectacular space battles, real personal development for some crew members while Mayweather gets nothing, but all too late thanks to season 2 killing off viewership and interest.
Best Episode - Azati Prime
Worst Episode - Rajiin/North Star

Season 4: Great. Finally some world/Federation building, mining the incredibly rich history of Trek to create some great serialized episodes, still nothing for Mayweather, and a horrible finale that insulted the cast and creators of the show as well as fans.
Best Episode - In a Mirror, Darkly parts 1 & 2
Worst Episode - Bound/Daedalus/These Are The Voyages...

I'm still angry at Berman and Braga for effectively killing Trek with bad creative decisions in the first two seasons esp. when there were so many other positive creative people trying to get them to do better. Pity we never got to see the refit NX class or the Romulan War or find out that T'Pol is actually half-Romulan.