Star Trek: Enterprise Reviews - From Start to Franchise Killing Biblical Torture

I gave up on Enterprise midway through the series run, but in the spirit of the other threads and a nod to the selfless sacrafice that Kyle is putting himself through I feel the need to one up him. I have some time off from work coming up and what better way to spend it than to get to know Captain Archer and the gang again. At some point my intestines will be strung about this thread to make it end, but that's half the fun! So let's take the ride on the series that almost buried Star Trek forever.

 

As I stated in one of the other threads, I recently started DVR-ing the series on SyFy (I noticed one day that they were running "Broken Bow" and figured it was a good chance to revisit the series).

I don't know if I'll contribute much to your thread because, frankly, I don't feel like typing so much. I'll definitely be interested in your perspective, though.

Initial "re-impressions" (up through "Terra Nova"): It's bad. Painfully so at times.* That said, the show interested me much more than VOY ever did.










*I had apparently repressed the memory of "Unexpected" because I didn't recall an episode where Trip got pregnant. The terrible "I can see my house from here" line from the Klingon captain reminded me that I had seen it.

 

Like shootER I caught up on the last half of the series via DVR a couple of months ago. I did find some improvement later on, but that's not saying much.

Let it begin.

(We'll see if you compare well to Robotech and Kyle )

 

My DVR is permanently set to record all of Star Trek. I routinely browse through the scheduled recordings and cancel any episodes I know I'll never watch. With Enterprise, that usually just leaves the one where they build their "phase cannons," anything with Andorians or Romulans, most of the Klingon-centric episodes, sometimes the "Augments" two-parter, the Borg one, the beginning of the Xindi arc where they leave drydock with their new "photonic torpedoes" and take on some Klingons in a nebula, the reset button episode where T'Pol spends years nursmaiding MementoArcher, and the mirror-universe episodes.

 

aye aye.

 

DON'T DO IT!

 

I remember going into it with an open mind (despite hating the ship passionately), and going out of my way to look for the good things in each episode.

That... didn't last.

 

Never had a problem with the ship. I liked the NX-class, and loved the whole idea of an outmatched ship being upgraded with advances they discover along the way. In the "main" timeline, I can only remember T'Pol's sensor upgrade, improved hull plating, the phase cannons, and the photonic torpedoes. That "anomoly duplicate" full of their descendants also had tractor beams and some other funky shit. The alternate-timeline Ent where the Earth was destroyed got some Andorian shield generators from Shran. And then there's the mirror universe Ent that appeared to have the pulse cannons that Columbia got, plus a Suliban cloaking device. It's too bad we'll likely never revisit the "Empress Sato" era. You have to assume their NX-class fleet was eventually upgraded with tech from the Connie Defiant stolen from the "main" universe.

That show had more than it's share of flaws, but I don't count ship design or VFX among them. I might even go so far as to say that's the only reason I bothered watching most of it.

 

The Slug episode killed it for me. I liked everything up until that point. When I fell asleep during that second episode I knew the series just wasn't going to work.

 

It was very much a mixed bag for me early on. there were things I really liked and things I really hated. As the show went on there were episodes I thought largely worked (no real classics until you get to the Vulcan/Andorian conflict) but some that were TNG level decent...and also some utter monstrosities. Or rather, there were episodes with a decent foundation but with just enough cancer to kill the enjoyment of it.

All that said, the 4th season, IMO, ROCKED (as much as any season which still featured Captain Archer could possibly rock)

You do yourself a disservice if you drop out before the end (albeit, the very last episode is pretty torturous)

I've always said, and maintain (I thought about doing a thread like this myself) that there are about two seasons of a good series buried in there - one average season and one very good season - but the incredible badness of the other episodes drag down the episodes that were otherwise pretty decent.

which is to say that, you can't enjoy "The Andorian Incident" nearly as much having first seen "Fight or Flight"

All that said, some episodes you'd otherwise keep are bound up in the TCW and then later the Xindi arc ("Twilight" is a good example) which makes it harder. so you end up still having a few more eps in this "Alternate Enterprise" than you would have if it was only about selecting the best episodes, or some that you keep on quality wouldn't make sense.

 

Let me guess . . . it ended the first time you heard the theme song, right?

 

I was willing to overlook that in the beginning in case the show was good. After 3 or 4 times hearing it, I stopped overlooking it and just muted the fucker.

Albert: I half agree - ship aside, I never fault any Trek show for its effects - the effects team always did their very best and gave us quality visuals. The story wasn't their fault.

 

Good luck! I've only seen a handful of episodes, but I might follow along just out of morbid curiosity.

 

Season 1 - Episode 1 & 2

Broken Bow

Aaaaaand we're off. Now just to lay a few ground rules here. I won't be quite a wordy as Kyle, there's only so many Archer Dog and who is that nameless little African boy driving the ship jokes that can be made. I'm also not a stickler for continuity. I want something to be interesting now. I don't care if it shits on the Gorn of if the font makes Earth and Klingon Empire too close for realism. So a preemptive to anybody who is looking for me to :herp: apart this show. There was plenty enough wrong with it.

So we open with a boy painting a model spaceship. A nerdy kid who proudly boasts to know all of Zephram Cochrane's speech by heart. I'm sure that got his head stuck in the toilet at school more than once. His dad is proud of him for that, obviously fathers in the near future are deballed as well. Father and son share some plot points at daddy's new starship being ready soon as the son paints his model some more. Son then complains about the man keeping humans down and by the man he means Vulcans, pointy eared bastards.

The scene then abruptly shifts to Samuel J Evenflow XXI's farm in Broken Bow, Oklahoma 30 years later. I may have made part of that up. Anyways it seems some space Mexicans have crossed the border and landed in Flow's cornfield. Bastards. Wait, those aren't space Mexicans! Soon we see a Klingon(shut up about the make up someone who wants to complain) running through the cornfields, obviously knowing what happened to fit men in the Cornfield at the hands of early 21st century Farmer Flow. Chasing him are two aliens we've never seen before, but more than their foreheads are made up so these guys have to be important. The two aliens chase the Klingon into a silo and by this time also Farmer Flow has gotten his gun and is in hot pursuit. Doors are for pansies for these aliens as one of them shapeshifts under the door. Pretty bad ass. The Klingon, ever the cunning warrior, jumps out another door and what the fuck was that farmer storing in that silo? One disruptor blast and kaboom!

Farmer Flow makes his way to the silo and sees his shit all blowed up and orders the Klingon to drop his weapon. Nice touch having the Klingon barking in his native tongue. It would have been easy to just universal translatize the series right from the get go. Too bad they didn't stick with that. Farmer Flow puts two in the Klingon's chest and off to the opening credits. Way to go Flow.

God I hate this opening so much. I'm never watching it again.

Next is a pretty sweet shot in space of the spacedock where the Enterprise is currently moored. Scott Bakula's first scene is looking kind of awestruck at the Enterprise. He'd keep that look on his face for the next four years. Trip commits his first act of heresy scratching the paint job on Daddy's new toy. The inspection is cut short when ole Captain Archer is summoned urgently to Starfleet Medical.

Now in this time frame Vulcans all have sticks up their asses, more so than usual. Starfleet command wants in on why a Klingon has crash landed on their planet and the Vulcans basically pat them on the head and tell them to run along. A back and forth ensues until the Admiral informs Archer the Vulcans want to postpone the launch of his ship. Taking it like the little child we will all grow to hate Archer tosses a tantrum, first forgetting the Vulcans are in the room loudly putting them down and then barging into what might be a sterile environment to ask the doctor on hand whether he let his patient die. Smooth move, Exlax.

Archer then runs into a alien custom that offends his delicate sensibility when the Vulcans inform him that Klang, our wayward Klingon, should be allowed to die and have an honorable death in battle. Channeling Janeway Archer will have none of that malarky. T;Pol and Archer have their first interaction and right from the get go when given good material to work with I do like T'Pol. The Vulcans try to reason with Archer, but he wants to take his new toy out, interstellar war be damned. Archer requests three days to get his crew together and it is granted. The Vulcans storm out of the room, probably to go to therapy.

Next we meet the rough around the edges tactical officer who as yet remains nameless. He chats with another officer who claims to the driving this thing and is nameless, and shall presumably leave his personality in space dock for the entire series, about the transporter being approved for people and how that gives them the heebee jeebees. As they walk around the ship talking about nothing we see frantic work to get the ship ready. I did like the interior design of the Enterprise. Both outside and inside I was really pleased how the ship looked, especially engineering. The warp core is fucking huge. Very neat camera work gives us a look at just how big and cramped engineering is.

After a few more plot points about needed supplies the scene shifts to a jungle classroom where a hottie is teaching a linguistics class. Arhcer pleads with Hoshi to join the ship now as he needs her ear and we all need something to look at out there. Initially she refuses, but Archer knows how to get her moist and after playing some Klingon for her Hoshi agrees to ditch the kids for outer space.

Back in space Archer informs Trip that humans have no fucking idea where Kronos is so in exchange for the GPS directions from the Vulcans, their science officer is none other than T'Pol. After the introductions T'Pol smells Porthos or maybe he shat somewhere creating an uncomfortable moment. Arhcer notices this and being quite a dick again, mentions out loud that Vulcan females don't like things that smell like they lick their balls all day. Way to build team morale there. After fucking with her, Archer lays the smack down about following his orders and T'Pol fires right back with how she can't wait to leave the ship, either.

After a pretty neat dedication scene, the Enterprise breaks space dock. I'm a sucker for these types of scenes so I really enjoyed the slow panning around the whole ship. Didn't they just up and reuse this scene later in the series?

And so we've reached Enterprise's high water mark as far as story telling goes. Sadly the next scene introduces us to Future Guy and starts a story arch so stupid it's never finished. It starts off ominous enough, a shadowy figure wishing to know how the operation on Earth went and wanting to be kept in the loop. Why the fuck did he have to be from the future? Guh.

Phlox gets his first real scene next as he's making himself at home in sickbay. Phlox was from this scene the best written and acted character on Enterprise, rivaled only when T'Pol got good material, IMO. I really liked this scene too, Phlox has just the right attitude for an alien serving on an experimental human ship.

Archer and Trip show their bafoonery insulting T'Pol again, this time at the Captain's private dinner table. T'Pol scolds them on their love of delicious juicy beef served with all the fixins. Trip fires back about how humanity eliminated war and poverty and cannibalism, though makes a crude joke about maybe bringing that last one back. Little does he know what he'll be eating in a few years bow chicawowow.

After Hoshi and T'Pol have a little cat fight on the bridge Phlox calls down to inform the captain that our Klingon courier is now awake. Hoshi and the Captain scamper up to greet their guest who is rather annoyed to be tied down in a hospital bed.

The little chat is interrupted as Enterprise drops out of warp and loses power throughout the ship. In the first of countless times, Enterprise is boarded by the shape shifting aliens. One of them manages to sneak into sickbay until being spotted by Hoshi. A very tense scene insues as the crew in sickbay attempts to find the alien in the dark. After a security agent caps one of them another manages to kidnap the klingon and a few moments later the lights are back on.

Back on the bridge Archer orders the crew to find out who invaded his ship and after T'Pol dresses him down on the bridge Archer takes her back to his ready room. Keeping his pimp hand strong, he orders her to make herself useful or he might glare some more...or something.

Phlox cuts open the alien who got capped and we learn they are genetically altered Suliban. Enterprise imports magic DNA from Voyager.

Hoshi does yeoman's work translating Klang's words and after T'Pol shares some more info the ship sets a course for Rigel 10, Klangs last known location.IN the shuttlebay T'Pol tries to warn the crew not the be rednecks down on the planet or else that might get them killed, something Trip takes to heart so much he makes a joke out of it.

Once down on the planet the crew splits up looking for clues. Malcolm gets enamored with some long tongued alien hotties, and Trip sticks his nose where it doesn't belong and T'Pol once again has to remind him not to judge a book by its cover vis a vis random forehead aliens. After relaying a message to T'Pol that might be a trap Hoshi and the Captain go to investigate it. Sure enough a bunch of Suliban jump them and overpower them and toss them in a convenient nearby jail cell already inhabited by Trip and T'Pol.

Archer is then lead away alone and low and behold Sarin reveals herself, offering information on Klang in exchange for some tongue from our wayward Captain.

Sarin gives the lowdown on the Suliban plan to destabilize the Klingon Empire. Then...it happens. The worst three words ever uttered in Star Trek History. Temporal Cold War. I even had the Archer Face on me after hearing that watching this again and I knew it was coming.

Right after the juicy plot points are revealed weapons fire erupts around Archer and Sarin. Sarin manages to regulate and free the Enterprise crew though is sadly struck down during the escape outside. The elevator scene on the way to the surface, badass. During the ensueing firefight T'Pol is knocked down and rightly points out when Archer comes to rescue her that the Captain is rather important. Never being one to show good judgement though Archer sends her to the shuttle anyways and gets shot for his trouble.

Lacking a good reason so far to show gratuitous skin the writers came up with the brilliant idea to have Trip and T'Pol rub down each other in gel to get rid of some spore or whatever. Not only that, but someone should look at the enviromental controls for that room as T'Pol Subcommanding nipples are showing their emotions during the entire scene. In the middle of all the rubbing T'Pol and Trip have a legitimate discussion over who should be in command and how the chain of command should work with Archer out of it for the moment. This could have been a really good scene in say, Archer's ready room. All the nakedness really diminishes though.

Back in sickbay Phlox slaps an eel on Archer's wound making it quite better. Showing some teamwork, rather than blowing up the mission, T'Pol finds a way to track the Suliban while Archer was out of it. She was in command for six hours during this mission and did more than Archer did up to this point. Scott Bakula puts on the Archer face of surprise at this development.

The Suliban warp trail leads our plucky ship to at Class 7 gas giant. After some creative science work T'Pol correctly deduces that 14 Suliban ships have recently been at this planet. After another spooky scene with the shadowy figure the Enterprise dives right into the planet, finding the Suliban station. Hoshi locates a non Suliban lifesign and after Enterprise hogties a Suliban ship Archer and Trip set off on the Suliban ship to rescue what they presume to be Klang.

Once abord Trip and Archer quickly find Klang. Trip lays the mooshuguna down remarking on how easy this is turning out to be. not 30 seconds later the three of them are pinned down by Suliban weapons fire. Way to go, Trip. After escaping that Trip and Klang run to the ship and Archer uses a "bomb" that destroys the stations ability to keep all the little ships maglocked to it. Very nice, I liked that, would have been really easy to set a normal bomb.

Archer though forgets what Malcolm had told him about having only 5 seconds and gets stranded on the part of the station that remains intact. Having had to move the ship to avoid Suliban depth charges Hoshi gets to shine again finding Trip in the muck. She detects a narrow notch in the mid range of some noise to find them which is ironic because I too would like to discover her narrow notch in the mid range.

Back on the station Archer comes upon a strange hallway which just do happens to be not guarded and lead into spooky guy's room. T'Pol and Trip have it out on the bridge again about whether to go rescue their idiot Captain or complete their mission. Trip wins, ofcourse.

Meanwhile, Archer and the only Suliban worth his salt have a war of insults and dodged phaser fire leading back out into the hallway. Trip manages to beam Archer out in one piece unfortunately just before Archer is about to get shot.

Once on Kronos Klang delivers his message hidden in his DNA. Magic DNA! Since the message was hidden there all along, Klang being delivered in corpse form would have worked just as well. Archer gets orders to continue their mission and has a massive mea culpa for fucking with T'Pol all two episodes and asks her to stay, but then throws that all out the window insisting T'Pol make the request herself.

So as far as Trek openings go this is in my opinion one of the better. Much better than Encounter at Farpoint. I just hate Archer so....so much. This probably would be a Four Star opening if it weren't for him and the idiotic temporal cold war. I really liked everything else.

Rating: ***
Times the Enterprise is boarded by hostile aliens: 1

 

Did I say I wasn't going to be as wordy as Kyle? Oops.

 

My thoughts after I first saw Broken Bow were something along these lines: "It's kind of hard to be awestruck with the vast unknown when you've already seen what's out there."

 

Knowing that, by the next century, the Kingdom of Flow has spread clear across the state, makes that episode a little more tolerable to me.

 

I thought Broken Bow was pretty well done. The series went down hill from there.

 

Did you know that originally they were just going to use an off-the-shelf Akira-class for the NX-01? They didn't think anyone would notice. Seriously.

 

That was Berman's orders. The design guys had presented actual original ideas, but Rick just said "use that one from the movie, who cares?" The design guys (Eaves? Probert? Can't remember) talked him into letting them at least modify it a little.

And then the first image released to TV Guide was a straight-down top view, that's for all intents and purposes identical to the Akira. I screamed.

 

I never had a problem with the design of NX-01 and it's similarity to the Akira class. Doug Drexler was the one in charge, I believe, and he ended up polishing it up to be something that actually fit reasonably well.

There's the one site that hosts some images in which Doug Drexler does a pretty good job defending the redesign and pointing out more than a few times in recent history where modern designs share a lineage in appearance with those from the past, essentially stating that, in terms of the Trek universe, the Akira class was based on the NX-class, though in that pesky old real-life, it was obviously reversed. I believe his methodology was showing a picture of two aircraft carriers, old and new, and then claiming how unrealistic it would be that they could possibly look at all similar.

 

I remember flipping on the ep right at the point where Flow shoots the Klingon with his shotgun and thinking, "WTF is the guy doing with a shotgun? I'd think that folks would have phasers. It doesn't make sense." Then I promptly flipped to something else and didn't worry about it. (I'd already skimmed the leaked copy of the script and figured it was probably going to suck. When I saw the Klingon get it in the chest I knew the script I'd read was legit and there was no hope for the thing.)

 

My take: a lot of good details, a lot of potentially interesting characters, all undermined by a pansy-assed captain that would make Jean Luc say "What a damned sissy" and a colossally ill-convinced major story arc.

Faced by those two huge flaws, I remain stunned that anyone could have greeted this episode with panic about the design of the ship.

 

There were so many plot holes, errors, and throwbacks to 24th Century Trek in this pilot that I understood immediately that the entire premise of this series was skunked from the get-go.

1. First contact with the Klingons in 2150/1? No.
2. Starfleet exists as an organization before the Federation? No.
3. Earth to Q'uonos in four days in 2150/1? Not only no, but HELL NO.
4. Future Guy / Temporal CW? Ahhh, no. Must be a Braga project, though!
5. Scott Bakula as captain? A neat thought, but FAIL in the execution.
6. Uniforms using TNG style rank pips vice TOS style stripes (or even something more contemporary)? WRONG FONT!

That's just out of the gate in episode number 1.

 

I had low expectations from the beginning this one. It would have been silly to have expected the exact same creative team that sucked so hard on Voyager to produce a show of superior overall quality.

So, I watched the first two and a bit series and then gave up. There were a small number of good episodes. "Dear Doctor" was the standout but in general the show was pretty rubbish, unable to keep to its premise and what differences there were from other Trek shows only cosmetic. (Phase cannons instead of phasers, hull plating instead of shields, grappler instead of tractor beam.)
The Temporal Cold War in particular pissed me off. Complete nonsense, and the writers even went so far as to admit that they had no idea themselves what was going on with it.
There was also no need for any Borg or Ferrengi, and I'm glad we didn't see the Romulan Wars, as the writers wouldn't have been up to doing it justice.

That said, I may now revisit the Mirror Universe episode and any others that are particularly acclaimed in this thread.

 

I don't think it's entirely fair to place all of the blame on Bakula for the way Archer turned out. That is not how the captain of the first warp 5 ship should have been written. I would've hoped to see equal parts unabashed curiosity and balls-out recklessness in a crude-talking, swaggering womanizer who liked to drink whiskey with his crew and walked the decks of his tall ship with a phase pistol slung low. Maybe he loses an eye and/or a limb in battle. Maybe he and his chief engineer get tired of having their asses handed to them, decide "Fuck regulations written by people too far away to help us," and start salvaging or trading for alien systems that enable them to hold their own in a fight.

And about that crew. Jesus. I think we could've done without most of that senior staff, save T'Pol, Tucker, and Phlox. Maybe Sato. MAYBE. They actually had some decent moments and could've been salvaged with improved writing. I'm talking about the characters and the actors. The rest of the main characters were really fucking drab and uninteresting for the bold crew of the farthest-reaching Earth ship of their time. Where are the wide-eyed explorers who chewed hull plating and fought bloody-knuckled to get assigned to that ship? The unbridled emotion at every new challenge, each new discovery, every battle won? Smothered under the baggage of lukewarm, monotone writing from a production staff that should've passed the baton about 10 fucking years prior, recited by a bunch of clock-punching actor drones who were not exactly of the sort who could read a phone book aloud and make it compelling.

 

A day later, one more thought I can add. If the Suliban had been an alien race holding some large empire on the doorstep of Earth possibly trying to angle against the Vulcans to add the Sol System to its holdings instead of the retarded temporal cold war, this premiere probably would have been the best of any Star Trek. At this point we still don't know how insufferable Archer would turn out to be or some of the other flaws in the series.

 

Much as I lusted after Hoshi, I can never forget that the first thing she did when she came aboard was whine about which side of the ship her cabin was on, because the stars were going in the wrong direction when she looked out the window.

This showed me the mentality of the writing staff immediately - whiney latté-drinking Los Angelinos brought up in cushy well-provided-for homes who never had a day of hardship in their pathetic lives.

And Hoshi is lucky she had a fucking window at ALL! Fuck, Kirk didn't even have a window.

 

The Suliban were completely fucking unnecessary. As was the Temporal Cold War. There was plenty of potential for juicy stories based on what was already known of that era. We got a hint of what could have been in that short arc involving a coalition of Humans, Vulcans, Andorians, and Tellarites cooperating to track down that Romulan ship. I say we're still owed a proper Romulan war.