I quit watching for a
variety of reasons really. For one thing
it had just become too time consuming.
When I first became a Star Trek fan in 4th grade, there had only been
one show on the air to watch every week.
Only getting a small taste of your favorite show every week is rare
enough to keep it a special event, and to keep you from getting sick of
it. But by 1996, there were two Star
Trek shows currently on the air, and two more in re-runs, and I just got burnt
out by it all. Plus it all got to seem
the same after a while. The original
1960s series aside (the original series has always been its own unique animal)
the basic structure, plots and characters of the 3 modern Star Treks were all
very similar to each other. I just
started to get bored with it all.
I never saw
Star Trek: Enterprise. By the time it came out I wasn’t particularly
interested in Star Trek anymore, and besides I was in Japan when it came out, so I wouldn’t have been able to watch it even if I wanted to. But I did read numerous bad reviews of it,
both from Star Trek fans and the general public.
By the time
it became available on DVD (and for illegal downloading on the Internet) it had
gotten so many bad reviews that I decided not to bother.
But, on a
whim the other day I decided to give it a try.
A co-worker
of mine (and fellow Star Trek fan) told me that the last season was when the
writers finally figured out what they were doing, and the show finally started
to get good. So rather than risk wasting
my time with 3 potential awful seasons just to get to the good stuff, I decided
to start right out with the 4th season.
At this
point, I still haven’t seen the first 3 seasons. They may well be as bad as everyone says they
are. I don’t know.
But what I
can say with confidence is that Star Trek: Enterprise season 4 is good.
Inevitably,
some of the episodes in the 4th season are better than others. But when they are good, they are really
good. And when they are mediocre—well,
they’re certainly no worse than any of the other Star Trek series on a bad day.
There’s
plenty of action, the stories are suspenseful, the pacing excellent, the
characters likeable enough. And for fans
of the original 1960s show, I really enjoyed all the fun nods back to the
original. Many alien races and concepts
that were introduced on the original Star Trek, and then subsequently ignored
by the next 3 Star Trek incarnations, are given a lot of screen time on
Enterprise, like the Andorians, the Orions, the Gorn, the Tholians, and the
Mirror Universe.
I was
worried a prequel series would mess with Star Trek continuity, but they was
pleasantly surprised how the writers took great care to match everything
up. (I’m told the previous 3 seasons
were very sloppy about continuity, but at the moment I can only vouch for the 4th
season.).
The 4th
season is definitely worth watching, I guess that’s all I’m trying to say. Now I just have to get around to watching the
other 3 one of these days.
Link of the Day
The Week the World Stood Still
Link of the Day
The Week the World Stood Still
Star Trek Enterprise: 4th Season: TV Review (Scripted)
9 comments:
I have always been intrigued with space, and semi-regularly watched Star Trek: The Next Generation. I was riciculed by my brother for this, of course, because they used big techy words that I could never understand. I said that wasn't the point; this was the future. Duh! Brothers! I began watching Deep SPace Nine, but similar to you, it seemed overkill with so many available shows, so I quit watching entirely. Maybe I'll ck out Enterprise.
Technobabble is one of the most annoying things about Star Trek (something that had very little of in the original, but unfortunately increased in TNG and the following incarnations.)
I can't vouch for any season of Enterprise besides Season 4, but I liked Season 4.
There's some Enterprise related chatter on me blog over here. It seems to have followed the same trajectory of the other ST franchise series: incredibly crappy first few seasons, followed by strong legs and good finish (although maybe Voyager doesn't qualify at all). If I think about it now, I can't believe the hubris the writers indulged in these series. Look at the successful series in play at the moment, and there is NO WAY a show like Breaking Bad or Mad Men would have survived the first season with that crappy a level of writing, never mind two or three.
DS9, btw, became my favorite of the bunch. The last three seasons are terrific, a showcase of what Ron Moore was whipping up for Battlestar Galactica.
I read your post. Sounds like you gave up after the first episode, but then that post was dated 2005. Have you seen the 4th season?
If not, I recommend you do like I did. Just start at the 4th season and work your way through it. It's not the best thing ever but it's really not half bad.
Also regarding your 2005 post--It looks like this has already been addressed in the comments section, but I don't think there's any continuity problems with introducing the Klingons in Star Trek Enterprise. They seem to have already had some history with the Klingons by the time they pop up in TOS. It's the Romulans who are supposed to be the big reveal. To the credit of Enterprise, they go through great lengths to make sure that no face to face encounters with the Romulans ever occurs. To the discredit of Enterprise, they blatantly ignore what Spock had originally said about no face to face encounters occurring because the technology did not exist at that time.
But more to your second point, it does seem unbelievable now how bad a lot of the seasons of Star Trek were. I guess obviously they survived because they already had a built in audience who was perhaps willing to forgive too much. Hopefully the next time Star Trek gets reincarnated as a TV show, they will get their act together.
Someday before I die I will try and go back and work my way through those last seasons of DS9. You're not the only person who has recommended it to me. I'm not sure if now is the time though. Still perhaps need a few more years to forget all those mediocre episodes in the first 3 seasons.
I saw a handful of Enterprise episodes from the last two seasons, and they were decidedly sharper (and a great deal grimmer) than the goofy shit they foisted on us in the first. I saw one episode (a stand-alone?) that followed Alternative Archer in the Spock's Beard Universe (anything with the old terry-cloth jerseys and zipper-boots gets a thumbs-up from me). I thought that one was terrific. And I saw a few episodes that followed a "terrorist" sort of plot, which was very much on the minds of viewers (and Manny Coto, who went on to 24 after that) at the time.
I have started watching every episode of Star Trek: Enterprise because of this post. You have woken up the Completist in me -- thanks!
I'm glad I could help.
...Speaking of Completist tendencies, I've actually been thinking for quite some time that I'd like to do a run-through through the whole franchise. You know, start with "The Cage" and just work my way through everything. But that will have to wait until a time when I can actually get my hands on all the episodes.
It won't take long. And TOS got the whole "Star Trek"-ball rolling.
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