Why is Enterprise so disliked?

SeanW

I just got finished watching all of Star Trek: Enterprise and while I was expecting to hate it, given all the bashing I had read of it, it was quite enjoyable!
It really told a good story of the events leading up to the founding of the Federation, we got to know the Vulcans a little better, which was a big plus for me, and the series was well acted, additionally, that theme tune has grown on me.

Granted, they did spend a little bit too long with the Xindi storyline, whereas previous series kept individual stories down to 2-parters (I read that some of the writers of Voyager: Futures End wanted to make that a 4 part, and have for example Tuvok getting caught up in a convenience store robbery etc) and also that the introduction video was also a departure from normal Star Trek practice.
But aside from all that, I found it very good.

What's the deal?

Cookie_Monster

poor actors and acting
some very poor eps in series 1
too many ridiculous time line stories
some massacring of establish history to fit it into Ent episodes

I sorta like it, it has some great episodes and isn't as bad as Voyager, but still not fantastic overall

Flashgordon197

I might have a look again at it sometime but when it came out I was sick of star Trek. From the launch of the next penetration;) it was 18 years of star trek in a row . Paramount were milking the franchise to death. It needed a gap. I also.thought Scott Bulka was a bit too twee as a captain.

nyarlothothep

Archer was George Bush in space. Tripp was his red neck vice president. Reminded me of the amount of southern characters in the Simpsons from around that time to appease the bible belt audiences. Red neckedism was trendy in the 00s.

Wait oh no, yeah, the time travel storyline was annoying and stupid and done to excess beforehand. However Enterprise is a better series than Voyager simply for the fact that the characters weren't nearly so unlikeable, Archer for all his flaws and idiocy is no Janeway, the worst captain in starfleet history ever and in the history of the human race.

azezil

I enjoyed it over all, but as already mentioned too much changing of established timelines and excessive time travel did bug me.

Kojak

Never got into Enterprise - there was too many episodes that were directly linked to future (in Trek world) events. Also as already mentioned, the umpteen time travel episodes - if this series was set in the 29th century (where they had time travel as a norm) you wouldn't have minded, but at the beginning of the federation?

Also, the episode with the women painted in green annoyed the shíte out of me. :mad:

_Kaiser_

As I said over in the Cancelled TV forum.... (note: SPOILERS AHEAD)


- Trying to lure new fans by dropping the "Star Trek" name until season 3 was a bad move

- Introducing already established races (The Ferengi and the Borg) and expecting the fans to accept the contradiction to established cannon because "technically we never mentioned their names"

- While TNG was guilty of this to an extent, Enterprise was all about the Archer, Trip and T'Pol storylines. Mayweather/Hoshi who??

- Ridiculous verging on soft-core "Decon" scenes

- Really bad choice of lead actor in Scott Bakula. Everyone just expected Al (Dean Stockwell) to pop up, and guess what.. he did!!

- A temporal cold war storyline that didn't really go anywhere for 3 seasons until it was abandoned for the Xindi storyline which WAS an improvement but by then I think a lot of people (me included) had long since given up following the show on any sort of even semi-regular basis

- Nazi aliens?? :rolleyes:

- The 2 Mirror Universe episodes.. not because they were bad (they were actually very good!) but because the characters and plot were a hell of a lot more interesting than the "real" versions we sat through every week (side note: this storyline is continued in the books and is actually a very good read too)

- The god-awful ending!!! Even though I thought the show was extremely poor, it did deserve something more than the send-off it got.

Aside from the pointless killing of a main character (which itself is then even diminished less than 5 minutes later!), they spend the whole episode building up to Archer's speech at the inauguration of the Federation... and then Riker (who we're supposed to believe watched all this during the TNG Pegasus episode.. despite being - and looking! - a hell of a lot older and fatter) "end program"'s the thing just as Archer is about to start!!!

About the only good thing about that last episode/series WAS the final scene.. Enterprise-D never looked so good and at least we got to hear some REAL captains one final time!

Myrddin

I think the preliminary scripts for Season 5 showed that Trip wasn't dead, it was some kind of ruse to protect the baby afaik. I had the same response as the OP, watched through them & thought nowhere near as bad as has been made out. Some great eps, some clangers...like every incarnation of Trek really.

JBnaglfar

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

poor actors and acting
some very poor eps in series 1
too many ridiculous time line stories
some massacring of establish history to fit it into Ent episodes

I sorta like it, it has some great episodes and isn't as bad as Voyager, but still not fantastic overall

Being honest, many trek shows have poor acting particularly in the early series and Enterprise did gradually improve. Series 1 had poor episodes, but the same can be said of TNG (seasons 1 and 2) and DS9. Your other points still stand.

nyarlothothep wrote: »

Archer was George Bush in space. Tripp was his red neck vice president. Reminded me of the amount of southern characters in the Simpsons from around that time to appease the bible belt audiences. Red neckedism was trendy in the 00s.

I think this is actually a pretty good point about Enterprise. After all, it is before the emergence of the Federation. There is no prime directive. Humans, taking their first steps towards what we have seen in the other series, are hardly prepared for space exploration. This takes time. In my opinion, Enterprise shows how far future generations change. And I like that.

Enterprise, while not an amazing show, is probably unfairly judged. After all, TNG and DS9 took 3 seasons to really get rolling. I feel Enterprise had found its feet by the end of its run. Some poor episodes, but some quality tv too.

Myrddin

JBnaglfar wrote: »

Enterprise, while not an amazing show, is probably unfairly judged. After all, TNG and DS9 took 3 seasons to really get rolling. I feel Enterprise had found its feet by the end of its run. Some poor episodes, but some quality tv too.

Same with Stargate Universe, people seem to forget new shows take time to bed in. They don't just pick up where a highly polished predecessor left off, viewers have to grow to know new characters, places, & often whole new takes on established ideas.

In the end, the fans that make shows so successful, are the very people that kill off what they love the most. The uproar over Enterprise was massive, & those very people shouting at Berman & co are now the very people whining because Star Trek is effectively finished for the forseeable future (on tv at least).

allibastor

Hi Guys,

Enterprise was good, but as said before it suffered from some stupid plot points, Anyone remember that Zefram Coughran was about 50+ in First contact, but still made a space flight some 80 years later???

the series was good but the whole introducing aleins that we all knew, but not mentioning names was a bit weak. also does anyone rember the kilngons in the origional star trek? they didnt look like they do in, lets say DS9, but how to they look the same in enterprise?


all in all it was a good show, but the writers let it down a bit with some odd stories. the whole future thing was a bit all over the shop, though it had some good points, like seeing the future enterprise.

Myrddin

allibastor wrote: »

Hi Guys,

Enterprise was good, but as said before it suffered from some stupid plot points, Anyone remember that Zefram Coughran was about 50+ in First contact, but still made a space flight some 80 years later???

the series was good but the whole introducing aleins that we all knew, but not mentioning names was a bit weak. also does anyone rember the kilngons in the origional star trek? they didnt look like they do in, lets say DS9, but how to they look the same in enterprise?


all in all it was a good show, but the writers let it down a bit with some odd stories. the whole future thing was a bit all over the shop, though it had some good points, like seeing the future enterprise.

TNG, DS9, VOY all had ridiculous early series episodes...its nothing new to ENT.

Also, I doubt fans would have been happy if the production team decided to paint peoples faces brown & call them Klingons either...it was a no-win scenario. I thought they did a pretty alright job at explaining the reasons, could have been better, but could have been worse too.

azezil

allibastor wrote: »

the series was good but the whole introducing aleins that we all knew, but not mentioning names was a bit weak. also does anyone rember the kilngons in the origional star trek? they didnt look like they do in, lets say DS9, but how to they look the same in enterprise?

When Worf is asked about it in DS9, he says something like "it's an internal matter. We don't discuss it with outsiders". However Enterprise did offer a bit of an explaination, the Klingon augments did look like the TOS Klingons

In reality the only reason they didn't look the same was the lack of a budget for special effects in TOS.

allibastor

azezil wrote: »

When Worf is asked about it in DS9, he says something like "it's an internal matter. We don't discuss it with outsiders". However Enterprise did offer a bit of an explaination, the Klingon augments did look like the TOS Klingons

In reality the only reason they didn't look the same was the lack of a budget for special effects in TOS.

I Know they didnt have the budget in TOS or the effects technology. it was just a shame because in TNG, DS9 etc when you see the klingon homeworld all the historical figures look like the klingons we all know, just thought it was a small side note as to why they looked different.

as for the odd episodes, it was not all bad, but some eps didnt make a huge amount of sense. saying that the mirror universe eps were very good, but should have had more of them.

Dotrel

Just watched the final episode of Enterprise. What the hell was that!?!

The show was very uneven but overall it was getting better once you get past season 1. That ending is ridiculous. It's like they got a couple of idiots to write it (I check the credits and there are Braga/Berman so I guess I was right).

A holographic episode set six years after Season 4 starring actors from a different TV show is best ending they could have come up with for ENT? On top of that Troi/Riker are supposed to be in a Season7 TNG episode but the look like they've aged even more than the 11 real years that had passed. Could they have not at least set the TNG segments 11 years (or in Troi's case 20) after the Pegasus episode to explain the appearance of these two?

Trip kills himself to save the ship? What? I'm betting he's been in this sort of danger 50 times during the run of the show but managed to solve it somehow without having to go Al Qaeda on us.

Finally The episode is building up to some great speach by Archer and then they just "end program" before we get to hear him even say a word of it? The 3x ship montage was just a slap in the face looking for a cheap cheer.

I think if you had any sense you'd consider the 2-parter where they save San Franciso to be the real final and just forget about this tacked on ending.

Seriously I've seen every single episode of Trek and this was one has to rate as the stupidest ever (even beating the likes of Spocks Brain). Don't want to hijack a thread but I think this train-wreck merits discussion on its own!

Slydice

pretty sure they tried to cram about 6 addition seasons worth of plot into that episode.

komodosp

I think each of the other "modern" series had at least one half-decent actor - Robert Picardo, Patrick Stewart, Armin Shimerman, maybe Rene Auberjonois - but I can't think of any in Enterprise...

the_syco

Although I prefer Enterprise over Voyager, I never really got into it, like I got in to DS9 or Picards Trek.

It seemed to want to please too many people like a "new series" would, as opposed to a continuation of a brand, if that makes sense?