I only caught a couple of episodes when it was on. There was something on another channel or I was busy that night for a long time.
I had the impression it wasn’t very good but I started watching on Netflix and it turns out I like it.
I like the idea of the first Starship , the first earth crew ever to venture out that far. I did notice the Vulcans are different. Much more deceptive than Spock who would not casually lie. They also ignore the superior strength of the Vulcans.
One thing I like is that the stories seem to harken back to the first series in that they dealt with moral themes. Bigotry, the first inklings of the Prime Directive, religious Zealots, etc. I also basically like the cast. Dr Flox is entertaining, Trip and the others. and of course, T’Pal is smokin’ hot.
I read through part of one thread that contained a lot of criticisms. Even though I thought STNG was a better show than the original with Krik, I guess Enterprise has a nostalgia quality for me because it reminds me of the original , which seems in keeping with the first voyage at warp speeds.
I often think the difference is too drastic from Spock. I can believe a gradual shift in culture over a couple hundred years, {how far were they from Spock?}
The physical aspect though annoys me. Spock’s physical superiority made for a couple of great episodes, but that seems to not exist here.
I’m into the 60s and it seems like this season they’re in the expanse trying to save earth from a plot. Special effects sure have improved, but I like that they still use the script, subject matter and cast, rather than just effects.
I was really looking forward to Enterprise when I first heard about it. When they introduced the temporal war I quit watching. I think that was the first episode. I caught snippets of episodes because my roommates watched it but I was through with it.
I watched it religiously when it was in first run. I also read the threads here on the Dope each week. Most Dopers uniformly hated it back then, as I recall, but I always enjoyed it on its own merits.
I recently watched the entire series again. For the most part, I liked it. Toward the middle of the series it became a little too dour for my tastes, and T’pol, who was, as others have stated, smokin’ hot at the beginning of the series, by the last season, she looked a little anorexic and beaten down to me.
I felt *Enterprise *did a number of things reasonably well and did a complete hatchet job on a number of other things. Going back to an earlier time with more primitive tech made for some interesting plot complications – you can’t just beam someone out of danger willy-nilly as that technology is just too new and untested to be used all the time. Getting to see more of the dynamics of the Federation’s early charter members was also very interesting and I would have liked the show to place more focus on the evolution of the Federation and early encounters between the Federation, the Klingons, and the Romulans, culminating in the Federation-Romulan War.
But no, they had to add that stupid temporal war arc which was lame from start to finish and completely unnecessary for the overall storyline – there were no doubt plenty of story arcs they could have explored without ever introducing yet another Big Bad to deal with. And what’s with the Romulans having cloaking devices?!? It is well established in TOS canon that this is a brand new technology when Kirk’s Enterprise battles the Romulan Bird of Prey in “Balance of Terror.” Mistakes like that are kind of unforgiveable in the Trek universe and I think soured a lot of people on the show.
I think part of the problem was the show wasn’t the show most fans had in their head which is the risk you take when you make a long awaited new entry in a well loved franchise but also the first two seasons were a tad sloppy.
The third season was a pretty good sci fi show but it wasn’t Star Trek.
Finally the Fourth Season was more like it. It seemed more Star Trek and told good stories many of which had connections to the other shows so of course it was canceled.
I think the inconsistent nature of the Star Trek back history opened the doors for some surreptitious retconning if they handled it tactfully. But more importantly, there were so many giant gaps in the history that they had a pretty blank canvas to work from and chose instead to retcon things that didn’t need it. It would have been much more compelling to me for them to put all the pieces of Trek history together rather than creating brand new pieces and using them in place of the story people were expecting. There were moments when they did this effectively – the episode where they encountered frozen Borg from the First Contact movie and closed out that loop was interesting. The episode where they explained why some Klingons have head ridges and others don’t was a bit of a stretch, but at least gave us an official explanation that made a certain amount of sense. Cloaked Romulan ships, “phase pistols” in an era that we’ve been told in TOS only had lasers, and so forth were all elements that didn’t make sense to Trek geeks like me.
I seem to vaguely recall an episode in which the Enterprise crew helped the inhabitants of a small town on a planet hide from the Klingons by moving the town. I thought this was the stupidest thing I’d ever seen, as it implied that the Klingon’s beamed to places by sight rather than by coordinates. Does my memory have any of that right?