If you were to ask a bunch of Star trek fans to rate the various incarnations of Star Trek the chances that Star Trek Enterprise and Star Trek Voyager fight it out at the bottom are pretty good. Even when you throw the Animated Series into the mix you won’t get too many arguments regarding the lessor of the Trek series.
It’s too easy to complain about Voyager, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel with an elephant gun but even though show got its full run as was established by Star Trek The Next Generation and Star Trek Deep Space Nine. Seven seasons is what you get in the Star Trek world.
Enterprise managed to beat the original series of Star Trek which originally ran for only three seasons (oh but what a wonderful two and a half seasons they were) with four seasons but only because of some word I don’t really understand: syndication and the magic number of 100 episodes that goes with it.
Now a lot of people really dislike Enterprise and originally I was one of them. I was really excited by the trailer and I generally enjoyed the pilot episode but then the first season was often silly, poorly thought out and badly written. The performances though from the cast were excellent despite a couple of secondary characters receiving the cold shoulder from the writer’s room.
The show suffered from embracing the new frontier whilst playing the story lines really really safe and for the most part dumb. It was infuriating and I lamented the end of Star Trek especially as the Next Generation had been handing in lacklustre film episodes as well. Maybe the people who had been in charge of Star Trek’s creative direction were a little stale after 15 years?
The show got better as it went along though it desperately tried to make itself relevant in today’s society with a huge story arc that drew inspiration from the tragic events of September 11 and the war on terrorism that followed. For the most part I found interesting slices throughout but certainly nothing to fill the Star Trek fan in me.
Then season four began and Manny Cato took over the helm. Cato is a confirmed Star Trek fan and wanted to inject a greater connection to the original series and the series that followed and we were treated to some truly excellent Star Trek. The Vulcans were put back on the path to become the characters we knew by Spock’s time, the riddle of the Klingon ridges were finally solved in a great tie in to not only the episode Space Seed of original Star Trek and its sequel Wrath of Khan but also to The Next Generation and Data’s heritage and we got to see the other side of The Tholian Web.
Suddenly it looked a whole lot brighter for Star Trek.
But then of course by this stage the fanbase were off enjoying other shows such as Stargate and Farscape (though don’t get me started there). The ratings whilst not the worst on television they weren’t Next Generation numbers and the decision to cancel the show is reported to have happened as early as half way through the season.
The tragedy is that the characters were becoming really interesting, the stories were a delight and Scott Bakula was now synonymous with Captain Archer*. So money talks and the show that was actually starting to become worthy of Star Trek (I think it earned this title in the 4th season despite adopting it in Season 3) was cancelled. That’s bad enough but then the people who had set Enterprise off on such a shaky start in the first place returned to give the show one last kick in the guts.
I argue that this is one of the worst series finales of all time, well up there with some of the big ones, I don’t count Andromeda’s finale because, well it kinda suited the show in the end. But the episode “These Are the Voyages…” was offensive to the cast, the crew and the fans.
The finale is told from the perspective of Commander Riker and Deanna Troi of the Next Generation and at the end we don’t even get to see Archer give his famous speech to what will become the Federation. At the end of the show all we get is two cast members of the Next Generation turning off the lights and the holodeck.
Stupid.
One good thing did come out of this however, it was the last time Rick Berman and Brannon Braga were allowed to go near Star Trek.
*Bakula was also in another scifi show that ran for a while though Archer is certainly his most recognised character 
**that was for Dan
Should we start drawing up sides on the Bakula issue?
As to the meat of this post, I completely agree. Enterprise, in the end, got shafted and then reshafted. First by the cancellation, and then by the finale. I didn’t hate the finale as much as most people, but I gotta admit it wasn’t stellar. And what they did to Trip… stu. pid.
It deserved cancellation, though, until they hit the fourth season. I may even be willing to back that up into the late 3rd season, but I can’t specifically remember why I say that – just a lingering feeling that I thought it was improving. I remember no details.
Anyway… the post is right on.
LOL I have to take counter opinion to Dan on Bakula mainly because it drives him crazy.
The finale would have been a really clever mid season episode during ratings period as long as they didn’t kill Trip.
There were some interesting thoughts running through season three and the length that a Starship Captain would go to ensure the safety of Earth which I really loved and spent some time pondering. I should put them down in a post one day next time I watch the series again.
Have you read the book The Good That Men Do? I highly recommend it because it fixes up a lot of the crap around that last episode.
http://quityourdayjob.com.au/2010/03/star-trek-enterprise-the-good-that-men-do
I go camping for a few days and I get back to this heresy. Not that I wasn’t anticipating it of course, as I already knew your idiotic view on the Bakula issue.
I watched about two episodes of Enterprise and wasn’t particularly impressed. They were from the first season though, and it was at a time when I wasn’t really following the geekier end of pop culture (I was like a lost lamb who strayed from the fold).
I’ll take your word for it that it got better, however there’s to many other shows I want to watch to go back for it.
Since watching the show through once (forcing myself to be honest), I find the idea of watching it again to be quite appealing.
You should watch the first episode again and see if it sparks any interest now that you are one of us
The theme song turned me off.
The theme song originally completely devastated me because I wanted them to use The Calling like they did in the trailer. However it’s only the theme and to be honest I didn’t really notice it until they added electric guitar for the third season!?
It’s one of those things that I really love the imagery and I know what they were going for but it just didn’t pay off in the end.
But like I say it has almost grown on me… kind of like fungus
I’ve been watching this on and off on tv. I liked that they were making more harsh decissions and did things ‘old skool’. Can’t comment on the cancellation or finale because I haven’t seen the finale.
and..is it worth re-watching?
Yes, I think if you can watch it in order and regularly and you can make it past the first season then there are some grand concepts and ideas in here wrapped in the occasional tired Trek storyline.
That is to say that by the end of the show you actually care about the characters but it takes a while
The idea is really sound, to fill in the blanks between First Contact and Original Star Trek but they made some poor decisions and went down directions that they shouldn’t have. I would have liked to see more of the development of the technology.
I keep going to comment on this but always end up getting the theme song stuck in my head! I remember loving the last season, but I think I’m in denial about how it “ended” because I can’t remember the last episode, other than being violently ill and disgusted over the Troi/Riker debacle!
And as much as I found the first season very variable, as a whole I found it more satisfying than… dare I say it… the first season of SG:U!
Apparently most fans do the same thing and dismiss the finale. There’s whole books dedicated to rewriting that episode
The last season was really a gift to old school Trek fans which the first season needed a little more of to establish it amongst fans.
I think that’s probably true comparing Enterprise Season One with SG: Universe Season One – Enterprise had a much more even story arc and at least some characters proved likeable