So I've got to say, I owe Enterprise an apology. I had always heard that it was a crude facsimile of the Star Trek world, and that it got everything wrong and kind of stunk.
Yet, having just finished the series (with a somewhat abrupt ending, indicative of the frustration over the cancellation after Next Gen, DS9, and Voyager were able to have their entire planned 7-year run,) I have to say that the series was not bad, and was actually becoming close to what I'd like to see in a future Trek series.
There were a few issues that made things tough for Enterprise. First, I'm just going to talk briefly about the awful intro theme song. It felt tonally off. The images of the history (and imagined future history) of exploration are cool, but the song is really corny and lacking nuance. I realize they wanted to differentiate Enterprise from the 24th Century shows, which all had symphonic themes, but I don't think this one hit the mark.
The other thing is that a prequel is always a very tough proposition. Obviously, given that Star Trek is an optimistic vision of the future, we're not going to see Earth or the Federation obliterated (at least not without some kind of time-travel-related fix,) and because we're talking a full century before the original series and two centuries before the Next-Gen era, the isolated issues that occur to particular ships won't necessarily have huge ramifications. With the space of centuries, you've got some wiggle room.
Part of the goal of Enterprise was to link modern space exploration with the intrepid space adventures of the other shows. Enterprise certainly has plenty of that, but people look more modern, and Starfleet really does feel like an evolution of NASA. The characters' uniforms look like flight suits instead of spandex space clothes, and the ship feels a little tougher, a little more metallic.
Another opportunity provided by Enterprise was that, given that this was Earth's first true era of interstellar exploration, we could meet some of the original aliens and delve deep into their cultures. The Vulcans are one of the two iconic Star Trek races, yet we had never really delved into their culture to the extent that, say, we did with the Klingons, despite having two series regular Vulcans before T'Pol. Enterprise deals with the inner workings of Vulcan and the history of Vulcan/Human relations in great detail. Additionally, the Andorians, who were introduced in the original show, got a great deal of development thanks to Jeffery Combs' Shran (Combs also played Weyoun and Brunt in DS9, and was one of the shortlisted contenders for Riker when they were casting Next Gen.)
Enterprise did encounter its fair share of weird space thingies, but in the third and fourth seasons, the show embraced serialization, which allowed for far deeper exploration of the interstellar politics of the Star Trek universe. Season four's arc about the reformation of Vulcan society gives us a lot of insight into how the Vulcans went from super-advanced aliens who looked down on us to acting as equal partners in the Federation.
Some characters certainly got more time to develop than others. We got plenty with Archer, T'Pol, and Trip, a bit with Phlox and Reed, and very little with Travis and Hoshi. Star Trek shows are typically built on the strength of their ensembles, but this show was weighted a bit toward certain characters. Still, with a less episodic nature, it's not as easy to go with the standard Star Trek formula of "time for a Geordi episode" or "time to throw Tuvok and B'elanna together and see what happens." episodes. You want to use your cast, but you also don't want to force it at the expense of your narrative.
I wonder if this show would have done better if it had begun ten years later. Enterprise was darker and grittier, and benefits from Netflix as a venue. We had also just come off of Voyager, which, along with DS9, had carried on the legacy of Next Gen, both in its later setting and its visual style. Enterprise shifted both of those, which may have come as a shock for people who wanted more of the same.
In fact, Enterprise looks more modern than Voyager (big surprise, given that it's more recent) but in 2000, the new, more cinematic look of television was only just getting started. And while Enterprise continued into 2005, it was unable to pick up the steam it needed in the earlier seasons to be a success.
So I've reversed my former position on the series, and I'd say that if you like Star Trek, it's definitely worth checking out.
Just try to tune out the theme song.
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