"Truth OR Myth? Star Trek: Enterprise, Was It Really.... " Topic

….That bad?

"In today's episode of Truth OR Myth we take a look at Star Trek: Enterprise and it's history and ask ourselves, was it really that bad?"

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Amicalement
Armand

I was one of those who was disappointed when Enterprise ended "early". Of course, I also miss Stargate: Universe, Dark Matter, and (of course) Firefly!

It was almost great. The last episode though was a travesty.
Cast was good,well balanced. The capt was up there with the best of them.

So was the klingon "babe". There you go, I said it. Now I am a misogynist for life…

I liked the notion of a show set before the original series, and said at the time they could miss the Star Trek universe's three biggest mistakes--the transporter, the holodeck and Q.

So in the first episode, they started transporting people. In the first half of the first season, we were back to holographic people. I left right then before they could schedule a guest appearance by John deLancey. They tell me if I had watched faithfully for two or three years, it would have picked up toward the end. That's not the sort of praise which causes me to buy the DVDs.

I found Archer to be whiny & droning. Was waiting for him to realize he was in another Quantum Leap…

@robertpiepenbrink, while they used transporters in the first few episodes ( maybe not in the very first, I don't recall ) they specifically mention that they aren't "Organism-rated" at that point – I think it's about the fourth of fifth where someone is transported due to a severe emergency.Been a while since I saw it, but pretty sure shuttles were mostly in use.

There *are* some very good episodes – the dilemna of giving medical assistance to a race that appears to be being replaced by another was fascinating, and you could feel the strain on poor Scott Bakula's face as he delivered lines that just a simple slip would have made him say "Prime Directive" when talking about the need for one decades before it existed sticks in my mind. I won't write it off for those reasons.
The Temporal Cold War though? BLEEP that noise :D

I generally liked it. But, as CW notes above – a temporal cold war? Sod that piece of silliness. But, we did have Jeffrey combs in full psychomode. And that can't be bad.

As I say, I'm sure it had some good moments. But I am not much for the theory that I should watch a program for two or three years while it "finds its feet." REAL Star Trek--or Maverick, or Leverage come to that--was good right out of the box.

And believe me, I was there when the moron scriptwriters used the transporter for people in the pilot episode. And the problem with the transporter wasn't that I didn't see enough of the shuttlecraft: it was that once you have the transporter, you have to explain why it can't get our heroes out of trouble this time. The first emergency use puts you right back into that hole.

And, if I am correctly informed, that "temporal cold war" represents more than a quarter of all the Enterprise ever filmed. So what it seems to boil down to is that Fourth Season is pretty good--if you're willing to sit through two bad seasons and one wretched one to get the backstory on everyone. I did that for Next Generation--except that it never really got very good.

So I have gone back to the old standard: it they can't write a good pilot episode, that's it. If they can't do a respectable first season, they can sell the second season to someone else. There is still more good TV out there than I'm ever going to watch again.

I hate prequels. They are never able to maintain correct continuity with later, already considered story lines. The same happened here. My least favorite of the series.

Yes, it was that bad. The show itself wasn't really all that bad. The first visit to Rigel showed promise. The problem was a critically flawed underlying premise.

If the show had been humans venturing into nearby space and getting into crap and making friends and enemies and frenemies it'd have been great. Concensus and alliance building a la Whedon.

But instead they opted for this overheated "Vulcans holding us back" and guiding us until we outgrew their control was flawed. If only the Vulcans had just lost interest and our first real interstellar buds were the Andorrians. I bet they throw a hell of a kegger.

The whole temporal cold war was garbage. Anytime somebody goes for time travel, it's a sign of narrative laziness. EXCEPTION: City on the Edge…

And that nonsense about the Xindi war was useless. How can we stomach a prequel to a series where we know Earth has survived, only to be asked to worry about it's destruction, which we already know does not happen. Really?

Archer was a poorly framed character, but there was lots of promise elsewhere in the cast.

Nice try, but mostly a swing and a miss.

Hmm…

I seem to remember a 60s sci Fi show that needed to go to a second pilot. I guess that show should not have been made, from what I read above.

Tos used the transporter all the time, but I guess that's OK too, for some unknown reason.

The humans living underground was a memorable ent episode for me. Seeing what happens to small groups of humans dumped on far flung planets is most interesting.

I thought it had the potential to be the best of all the series, but in the end it was lackluster.

Archer wasn't very captain or commander like.

The whole time war arc was stupid. I find the majority of time travel episodes in television and movies as lazy writing and boring.

They broke their own internal timeline by having technology that didn't exist in later series.

I DID like a lot of the "primitive" technology like the way they provided ship protection, etc.

I'm going to go ahead & add my voice too. There were certain elements that were quite good. I think when they delved into Trek lore & did it with respect, it was good. I loved that there was a focus on Andorians, a forgotten race in later Trek (despite being a "founding" member), Loved most of the 4th season. But I absolutely agree that the Xindi War & Temporal Cold War story-arcs were not really needed. If they instead focused on the founding & development of the Federation, it would be much, MUCH better. And if they really wanted a wartime story arc/season, focusing on the Romulan War would have been the way to go. Heck you could have left little easter eggs & never reveal that it was in fact the Romulans doing this, until perhaps the very last episode (though the fans of course would figure it out). So there was a lot of potential marred by poor writing & unnecessary elements that alienated hard-core fans, & weren't really necessary to pull in casual fans.

Damon.

Yes – basically a mixed bag.

You had some good ideas, buried under a bad core plot and mixed execution. The attempts to "fix" the show early on failed miserably and only when Manny Coto came did it start to really improve.

Even then, the suits insisted on a terrible finale…

I liked ST:Enterprise as well DS9 and Voyager plus a big Stargate fan of all the follow on series too.

I have always thought that the SyFy Channel should show one episode of each of the ST series. As well as all the SG series at least once a week. 5 ST series and 3 of SG … Much better than that Sharknado, etc., …

I'm dissenting.
The 4th season was the worst.
The took stories that at best might entertain for 42 minutes and draged them on for 3 or even 4 episodes. Those 4 episodes with the augments are the worst 4 hours in star trek history. Song is made into an idiot so the main bad guy can play him over and over again.

They just drag it on and on.

The Klingon forehead ridges episodes are stupid too. As it doesn't explain anything only raises more questions.
Worf explained it perfectly in DS9(we don't talk about it)

And that is one of the major problems with the whole series. The characters are stupider and simply do stupider stuff than in the earlier serieses mostly to try and make a story last 42 minutes (or in season 4 up to 3.5 hours)