How can I find five good moments from Enterprise?
The Next Generation offered a new era for Star Trek. Deep Space Nine kicked off before TNG went off the air and then there was Voyager, boldly going further into the 24th century and boldly getting worse as the years went on, becoming a horrible, horrible television show.
With Paramount and Rick Berman all too happy to wank the franchise out, squeezing every last piece of energy out from the tired writing of Bermans top time wasters, they hit out quickly after the end of Voyager and brought us Enterprise.
A prequel, because we all know how well that works, don’t we Mr. Lucas?
Deep Space Nine was good, but it didn’t have the space exploration aspect that some wanted, and while Voyager let us down with what they spewed out, Enterprise promised to show us the birth of the Federation and Starfleet by bringing us the same TNG era exploration but with some of that classic Star Trek feel of a cowboy in space sitting in the captains chair.
Unfortunately the format was epic fail. The captain was played by a man who was so unpassionate about everything, straight laced and just downright dull. His XO Was too obviously a bad replacement for Spok and scenes written for her and love interest Trip Tucker were the anti-sexy. The est of the cast remained under defined and pathetically unused and instead if merging the best of the previous Treks, they seemed to highlight the worst aspects of them just by being dreadful.
There were some good elements, however. Despite the fanboys having a crack at the ship being an obvious rip off Akira class from First Contact, it was very nicely designed both inside and out. The detail was incredible and it looked like a nice primitive ship closer to our own time. Spot on. The uniforms matched that with wardrobe focusing on a step up of our time rather than a distant future and by the fourth season the writers figured out how to make a decent show again. But it was too little too late.
Orions bring the sexy.
Bound (season 4)
There’s nothing I can say here but… sexy green women dancing. Awesome.
In seriousness, this brought back the Orion Slave Girls from the original series and updated them for our time. It was a nice callback to the original stories portrayed in the Trekverse and made the slaves something more by having them being the masters using their sexuality to control men, rather than being used for sexy time.
The origins of Data.
Borderland-Augments (season 4)
Well this was a pleasure just for Brent Spiner. In TNG Data was a machine working as an officer on board the Enteprise designed by Dr Soong. In Enterprise we see an ancestor of Soong working on genetic engineering based on the same work that brought us KHAAAAAAAAAAAN in the 1990′s. Of Trek time anyway.
There was a nice line at the end of it all when Soong gets put in prison after chasing down his genetically engineered mutant men where he decided to move on from supermen to creating something else… which leads into a lifetime of work that would caus his great grandson to complete that research as Data.
The Klingons explained.
Affliction-Divergence (season 4).
In this, the same genetic fiddling as above finds itself in the hands of the Klingons, who play with themselves to make themselves harder. Minds out the gutter, people. Uncle Phil of Fresh Prince fame kidnaps Dr Phlox to come fix them up as the genetic tampering is not only imprinting human qualities, but is deadly. Fatally deadly!
This didn’t need to be done, but in a season where the rest of the Trekverse was being referenced in the right way, the introduction to Augmented Klingons was a nice touch. Until then we’d have Worf brush off the change in Klingon appearance between TOS and the movies, but here we see the reason Klingons had a flat forehead in Kirks early era, but nowhere else.
Hoshi gets hot.
In a Mirror, Darkly (season 4).3
Notice a trend on the season 4-ness here? In this episode we see the Mirror universe, first seen in Kirks Era but mostly seen in DS9. And a very hot Hoshi moves from pumping machine to Empress as we see her take over the evil Captain Archers command and make herself ruler of the world while looking frakable in the process.
Mirror universe Hoshi managed more development in two episodes than real universe Hoshi did in four years.
We also got to see them moving through time to the Kirk dimension, stealing the Constitution class Defiant and replicating classic series sets and even a Gorn. Wonderful tribute.
Enterprise is cancelled.
(NO SEASON 5 FOR YOU!)
This was the best moment for Enterprise, when the plug was finally pulled. After a lackluster four years, it was well overdue. It shouldn’t have gone past two seasons. And thats being nice.
The fourth season, despite having a slap in the face finale, was the best it was going to get and anything else would be a let down. Well, more of a let down that the first three seasons which you’d have to be seriously loyal, or seriously mental, to love.
Any Enterprise fans out there? I’ll leave comments open so all six of you can moan about this.
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Comments
Comment from theredeemed
Time 12.04.2010 at 19:57
BLOG! How can I find five good moments from Enterprise? – via @twitoaster http://theredeemed.co.uk/watcher/how-can...
Comment from p0is0n0us
Time 12.04.2010 at 20:30
I agree that Enterprise suffered very badly from bad scripting. There were a lot of episodes that could of been rejected TNG/Voyager scripts and the one episode they did that was Star Trek 6 made me very angry.
Saying that I was rooting for the show, I think because it was so bad I was hoping someone was going to inject some life into the show and make it fresh. When the show first started it was simply called Enterprise and was proud to distance itself from the other shows are is was supposed to be new and fresh. A couple of seasons in people realized that it was the same churned out episodes and slapped the Star Trek back in the title.
The later seasons might of just had Archer, T’Pol and Trip in them. You barely saw any of the cast members. Even the bridge scenes had the b cast members just sitting there not saying anything.
T’pol’s character started off as a well rounded Vulcan but as the seasons progressed she became more emotional. She also started wearing less and less clothing (which is never a bad thing) which was a blatant attempt to get some T&A to boost the ratings.
I remember a lot of the cast voiced that they hated the final episode of Enterprise, Jolene Blalock said it was terrible. I think it was dis respectable to have the final episode of Enterprise be about Riker telling Picard is dark secret. That was very lame.
Comment from Zektar
Time 13.04.2010 at 17:48
Enterprise was a lost cause. Not enough spark was put into the crew, even the trio they ignored everything else for was ridiculously bland. So I completely agree with your top choice moment!
Comment from talis74
Time 14.04.2010 at 10:45
I think ent was highly underrated. wasnt the best but it was a decent show.
James Tyler Reply:
April 16th, 2010 at 20:52
The only underrated parts were John Billinsgly and both Linda Park and the T’Pol woman getting their chebs out.
James Tyler Reply:
April 16th, 2010 at 20:55
I didn’t mind the final ep in theory. But klling Trip for no reason, showing still no development in the undercast and the whole ideas of putting it in the middle of the Pegasus episode, with Riker not only being physically much older, but the dilemma he was facing having nothing to do with the nonsensical and futile mission Archer put himself into… it was kind of infuriating.
I’m with the opinion that the previous episode was a better ending, the finale was just… all too obviously put together for the final montage of the Enterprises.