Why did Star Trek Enterprise depart so from tradition

[corthew]

The theme primarily but that was not the only departure that made it the worst, (my opinion) of the Star Trek series'.

Scott Bakula, though a great actor in his element, was far out of it in this.

It seemed like he was trying too hard to be something he wasn't instead of bringing himself to the role as all other captains had done successfully.

Or maybe that was him we saw and it was just a terrible job of casting.

But that intro song...I expected to see Carla waiting tables while Woody got Norm another beer.

I couldn't watch it much past the third season and was only painfully able to watch it up til then.

Also, calling it just, "Enterprise"...

But these are all just nit-picking.

It didn't feel like a Star Trek series when I was watching it. Maybe a Doctor Who meets Buck Rogers meets Star Trek.

The producers wanted to do something different and they succeeded but that was their mistake.

If they wanted to do something different they should not have called it a Star Trek series.

[Harb40]

For the most part, Enterprise was a disappointment but it did have a few decent episodes.


I agree Scott was not the best choice of actors for Archer. Myself, I would have looked at Scott Glenn first instead of making him a Vulcan.


The one bright spot, seeing Jolene Blalock in the skintight suit. Although her semi-nude scene was hot too.


I think if they would have called it 'Star Trek: The Beginning' or 'Before Trek', it would not have even lasted 1/2 a season.

[andy_price]

enterprise was set pre-federation of planets but yet the nx01 looked more advanced than the ncc1701 which i found odd.

I agree that Scott was not the best person for the role of archer, I kept expecting to see Al turn up and archer leap out to another time..... the inclusion of Daniels and the temporal cold front made that even more strange

however it did answer some of the long time questions in Star Trek, like the klingon head ridges not being there in TOS

[corthew]

I think if they would have called it 'Star Trek: The Beginning' or 'Before Trek', it would not have even lasted 1/2 a season.

You're probably right on that because it was too unlike Trek.

And Glenn would definitely have done the role of Captain justice. That alone may have pulled the series through another season or two.

I hope Enterprise didn't kill any future plans for Star Trek series.

It was an enjoyable run though regardless.

Did you notice though that the best episodes didn't have much of Bakula in them?

The only possible exception may have been Extinction, but of course, Bakula wasn't trying to be Archer as much.

[alonzo11208]

enterprise was set pre-federation of planets but yet the nx01 looked more advanced than the ncc1701 which i found odd.

I agree that Scott was not the best person for the role of archer, I kept expecting to see Al turn up and archer leap out to another time..... the inclusion of Daniels and the temporal cold front made that even more strange

however it did answer some of the long time questions in Star Trek, like the klingon head ridges not being there in TOS

Actually the Klingon bit was explained as far back as TNG era so it was pretty common Trek knowledge.

As far as Enteprise goes....the best episodes where the "Mirror Universe" ones. Thats it.

Otherwise, it wasnt trek.

[lucindamc123]

The television and film making industry is all about money, not art which is why we see what we do see in movies and on TV. Not that some of it isn't good because it is enjoyable. That is also why independent film making is so great because the people who do these kinds of films and shows are artists.

And it all has a lot to do with the current culture and what the majority of people want to see and to be frank most of it isn't really very good. Well we saw Hunger Games yesterday and that movie was great, except that I didn't care for the camera work at all. I thought it was kind of shoddy. But the acting and the story was great.

[Harb40]

I hope Enterprise didn't kill any future plans for Star Trek series.

I don't see any other series in the future from the way Majel and Rod (their son) talk. Although, I have heard rumors of another movie and it is supposed to update us on Captain Sisko and the rest of the DS9 crew.

[corthew]

I don't see any other series in the future from the way Majel and Rod (their son) talk. Although, I have heard rumors of another movie and it is supposed to update us on Captain Sisko and the rest of the DS9 crew.

The Star Trek movie showing the Enterprise crew in their early years opened the door for an all new Star Trek series with completely different missions due to the altered timeline.

I'm really hoping someone will pursue that path.

[Mneros]

The problem that I had with Enterprise was the captain... and crew, where made out to have excessively high morals. Here we have a crew, ready to explore space with no Prime directive, or doctrine to stop them from making mistakes. Constantly the script had prime directive like decisions, for the actors to act out. It made Archer to much like a boy scout, who tries too hard.

when the ratings dropped, they pushed out a new War story arch. Hey it worked for deep space nine why not Enterprise? and it is here that you see Archer throwing away some morals, but by that time I didn't care anymore. and there are many aliens in the star Trek Universe that they could have started a war with, they didn't have to cook up the Zindi. They could have just made a war with the Klingons, Romulans.

also the problem with Enterprise was the timing, I think. DS9 just ended what many people thought was the best War Story of the Stars. With really dynamic, complex characters. and people wanted more of that. then they get Enterprise, the 2 comparisons are far left and right.

and a biggie for me was get different Actors they had the actor who played Wyonn of DS9, play the Andorian for the Enterprise series. though I find him an exceptional actor it was a tacky move on the casting of the show.

[Harb40]

also the problem with Enterprise was the timing, I think. DS9 just ended what many people thought was the best War Story of the Stars. With really dynamic, complex characters. and people wanted more of that. then they get Enterprise, the 2 comparisons are far left and right.

and a biggie for me was get different Actors they had the actor who played Wyonn of DS9, play the Andorian for the Enterprise series. though I find him an exceptional actor it was a tacky move on the casting of the show.

Agreed. I do believe though that the war depicted in DS9 was as close to reality as you could get without losing the fantasy aspect of it. It showed how people dealt with the effects of war and the opinions they had based on those experiences. Whereas the war with the Zindi was more fantasy than reality.

As for Jeffrey Combs playing in Enterprise after DS9, Marc Alaimo (Dukat) playeds a Romulan and a Cardassian in the TNG series along with several other characters in other sci-fi shows. That is common practice to use established actors. Stargate SG-1 used characters from Farscape (Ben Browder and Claudia Black).


Trivia: Vaughn Armstrong has played the most characters (eleven) on "Star Trek." Jeffrey Combs, J.G. Hertzler, Randy Oglesby and Thomas Kopache have all played seven characters, putting Alaimo in third place with six.

[Mneros]

As for Jeffrey Combs playing in Enterprise after DS9, Marc Alaimo (Dukat) playeds a Romulan and a Cardassian in the TNG series along with several other characters in other sci-fi shows. That is common practice to use established actors. Stargate SG-1 used characters from Farscape (Ben Browder and Claudia Black).


thanks for the Actors names I was too lazy to look them up.

here's the thing tho. while Marc did play other characters, most of them where from one episodes only. Jeffrey played 2 major reoccurring Characters. Had they bring him in for a one time thing okay fine. I guess I just kept seeing as Wyonn. Ben Browder and Claudia Black, that was actually cool. Big fan of those two in farscape.

[Harb40]

Jeffrey played 2 major reoccurring Characters. Had they bring him in for a one time thing okay fine. I guess I just kept seeing as Wyonn.

Correction: Combs played 3 characters. He was also the Ferengi named Brunt (3-5 episodes).

[Mneros]

most ferengi episodes i try to forget... thanks for reminding me

[corthew]

most ferengi episodes i try to forget... thanks for reminding me

LOL yeah, they aren't one of my favorite characters either. I think though that its because I've known a few Ferengi in my day and they are just as unappealing in real life.

[rgr]

The theme primarily but that was not the only departure that made it the worst, (my opinion) of the Star Trek series'.

Scott Bakula, though a great actor in his element, was far out of it in this.

It seemed like he was trying too hard to be something he wasn't instead of bringing himself to the role as all other captains had done successfully.

Or maybe that was him we saw and it was just a terrible job of casting.

But that intro song...I expected to see Carla waiting tables while Woody got Norm another beer.

I couldn't watch it much past the third season and was only painfully able to watch it up til then.

Also, calling it just, "Enterprise"...

But these are all just nit-picking.

It didn't feel like a Star Trek series when I was watching it. Maybe a Doctor Who meets Buck Rogers meets Star Trek.

The producers wanted to do something different and they succeeded but that was their mistake.

If they wanted to do something different they should not have called it a Star Trek series.

Sorry for coming into this so late, but I'll offer my $.02 anyway.

I think Scott Bakula is a fine actor and the problem was not with his performance at all -- it was the writing. The writing just plain sucked on this show. It was the worst combination of fanboy driven plot and actuarial table driven everything else.

The opening song sounded like a cross between Rod Stewart "soft rock" and Americana. It really just didn't set the tone for a pre-ToS/post-Cochrane era sci-fi show.

I would cite an example of bad fanboy writing as the explanation for the ridges -- it wasn't an artifact of genetic experimentation, it was an artifact of a small make-up budget. I don't recall TNG offering an explanation for that, but I really only followed TNG on re-runs, which is always a grab bag of episodes. I think TNG had some great shows by the way, but it also had a lot of disappointing ones.

The idea that this should have ever been about the aliens, though, is part of why ENT was such a dismal failure. Nobody actually cares about the aliens (well, almost nobody). We care about ourselves. When ToS was conceived, it was as a western. When that got shot down, they just dressed up the scripts as sci-fi and shot a pilot. It was about people though -- not horses and canyons. That's why it translated to sci-fi so easily.

It wasn't meant to be about mistaking fiction for reality. It was meant to be a way to explore the human condition in a judgement free context (or what ever "pre-judged" context the writers created for us).

Anyway, that's just my opinion. If anybody is into alternate ST universe fiction, there are a handful of series that are actually quite good on scifinal.com ... and I recently found this in my Vimeo "inbox" (which is apparently way better at presenting me with content I want to see than the youtube suggestions I keep getting):

Star Trek Aurora https://vimeo.com/31883614

[kkffoo]

I credit this series with 'putting me off' star trek for quite some time.
I can't give a good analysis of why, as I stopped watching fairly quickly.
It felt dreary and didn't seem to have anywhere to go.

[corthew]

When ToS was conceived, it was as a western. When that got shot down, they just dressed up the scripts as sci-fi and shot a pilot. It was about people though -- not horses and canyons. That's why it translated to sci-fi so easily.

I'm not finding a reference to Star Trek originally being proposed as a western. Considering the popularity of Wild Wild West though, I doubt it would have been shot down if the script was even remotely decent.
Here's a quote from Wiki though:

"In 1964, Gene Roddenberry, a longtime fan of science fiction, drafted a proposal for a science-fiction television series that he called Star Trek. This was to be set on board a large interstellar spaceship in the 23rd century[3] whose crew was dedicated to exploring a relatively small portion of our Milky Way Galaxy."

It wasn't meant to be about mistaking fiction for reality. It was meant to be a way to explore the human condition in a judgement free context (or what ever "pre-judged" context the writers created for us).

Agreed. As with many sci-fi shows and writings, it was a way to express the flaws of our times in a context that allowed us to learn from those flaws...To move beyond them.
Trek held a mirror up to us and allowed us to see the beauty we had overlooked by trying to ignore the ugliness that was seldom as ugly as we believed.

I really hope its not over.

[Harb40]

I would cite an example of bad fanboy writing as the explanation for the ridges -- it wasn't an artifact of genetic experimentation, it was an artifact of a small make-up budget. I don't recall TNG offering an explanation for that, but I really only followed TNG on re-runs, which is always a grab bag of episodes.

Actually, the ridges were explained with the DS9 episode "Trials and Tribble-ations" where the crew went back in time to stop Darvin from making a second attempt (which actually turns out to be the first attempt after all) to assassinate Kirk (TOS episode 'Trouble with Tribbles'). They interlaced scenes from TOS with the DS9 crew. At one pont, in the bar, Worf, Obrien & Bashir are sitting at a table when the TOS series Klingons come in and it cnfuses O'Brien and Bashir. Worf had to explain the ridges then (that is where the genetic experimentation was described).



Side note: In one interview, Roddenberry had said the reason the first attempt at getting Star Trek on the air was rejected was that the studio execs were looking to build on the successes of the other westerns of the time and weren't real keen on a sci-fi show. They screened the pilot and turned it down. Gene then went back, recast the Captain and the Doctor, rewrote a few things and got it on the air. The 2 part episode called 'The Menagerie' used the original pilot as the backdrop to a storyline about Spock's devotion to helping out a comrade (Pike).

[lucindamc123]

Why not watch something better like the series Eureka.


https://www.facebook.com/EurekaSeries

[Harb40]

Why not watch something better like the series Eureka.

Eureka is funny and decently good but this thread is about the tv show Enterprise and why it was so different than (or was it) the rest of the series. Besides, this season of Eureka is it's last.