In Defense of Star Trek: Enterprise
Michael > April 22nd, 2020, 11:55 PM
I've seen a few recent attempts on YouTube to defend Star Trek: Enterprise against its detractors. The show was criticized almost from the start for "not being Trek" to some people. I always really liked it, although I had to stop watching it during the initial run because of my social schedule.
One complaint I've always disagreed with is the way people hated the theme song for Star Trek: Enterprise. I love this song and I especially loved the version they recorded for the show. Rod Stewart did a good job with his version but I like this Russell Watson version better.
Here are two videos with the short (in-show) and long versions.
Watch ENTERPRISE Season 1 & 2 Opening Titles (HQ) from YouTube
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Watch Star Trek - Enterprise Theme (Extended Version).mpg from YouTube
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YouTube may remove the video from its service without notification.
There are some things about Enterprise that make me cringe. It's not entirely consistent with the original series, but I thought they did a great job overall of matching the direction the original series took. A lot of myths have grown up around the original series (like the idea that Red Shirts always die and that Kirk was more likely to fire phasers than other captains - not true in either case).
I have not watched either Star Trek: Discovery or Star Trek: Picard because I don't pay for CBS All Access and have no interest in it. So my comparative comments that follow have nothing to do with those shows.
In my opinion, the Enterprise theme song is the best opening song of all the shows. I hated the Star Trek: The Next Generation theme because I felt it was so grating and irritating. I kind of liked Voyager's theme song at first but it was rather onerous and by the 3rd season I was getting tired of it.
I also had to stop watching Voyager before it completed its run because of my social life but I eventually caught up with it, as I did with Enterprise, in reruns and streaming services.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was pretty boring until they brought Worf in. And it became even more interesting when they got into the war with the shape-shifting Founders of the Dominion. But the show still had its weak moments and there were some characters that I just never warmed to.
The worst of all the shows for me was Star Trek: The Next Generation. It became really good after the third season and the third season was where I began to have hope for the show. I could barely watch the first season when it was first broadcast and Dr. Pulaski just annoyed me so much I stopped watching the second season after a few episodes. There were so many things that were done badly in those first two seasons I was barely able to go back and watch them in reruns.
When I was a kid my mother allowed me to stay up late every Wednesday night to watch the original Star Trek during its primetime broadcast. I was devastated when the show ended. But that third season was pretty weak, even for someone as young as I was (about 9-10 years old). The only third season episode I clearly remember liking when it was broadcast was "Gary Seven".
One of the things that always bothered me about the original series was how its future history was so wrong. We're supposed to have lived through the Eugenics Wars by now - and the fact they haven't happened doesn't bother me. What bothers me is the fact that we're still not capable of launching a ship into deep space with a human crew.
The projections of technological advancement were just really too optimistic. Their failures even if only brief background details mentioned in passing in a couple of shows disappointed me.
By the time I was watching Star Trek again in reruns in the 1970s I was tired of the theme song. It really did not sound good to me. It was old and dated.
For as long as I had to live with squarish TV screens I was satisfied with the visual quality of the old episodes. I was not thrilled with the video effects of The Next Generation, especially considering that those episodes were competing with theatrical productions like Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. The movies felt more faithful to the original show than the successor show.
For me, Enterprise represents a way to correct many (if not all) of the disappointments of the prior shows. It was a brilliant piece of ret-conning in my view. And ironically one of the complaints people leveled at it at the time was that it felt like fan fiction.
I think fan fiction was just what the franchise needed. Now, people say it was not a popular show and that was why it was cancelled, but the truth is more complicated than that. Many people who watch the show in reruns or on streaming services today are unaware that Paramount used Enterprise as a flagship production for a new television network. The network didn't have as many stations in as many markets as the three major American networks. Worse, because they wanted to build their (now failed) UPN TV network (1995-2005).
Enterprise was supposed to take over from Voyager, but Voyager suffered from similar complaints and problems. UPN just didn't have the clout to build a huge network fan base and its shows were excluded from the larger syndication market while they were in production.
So fewer people were able to watch these shows.
The third season was unquestionably the best of the four seasons. The Xindi arc gave the show and intensity and a focus that allowed the writers and directors to focus on its strengths (the characters) without the distraction of dreaming up new scenarios every week. Yes, they had to have weekly episodes but they had a theme. Star Trek works best with longer story arcs, in my opinion. Even as a kid I hated the episodic discontinuity of the original show. It was like each week's adventure existed in its own separate timeline.
I don't understand why people today criticize the Xindi arc. It was a great story and had a lot of great guest stars. There was nothing as silly and cringe-worthy like the episode where Archer had to cut a tree to atone for Porthos urinating on some alien sacred tree. That was -- I don't know what that was.
Of course, like just about everyone else I hate the way Enterprise ended. It was just a totally unnecessary intrusion by two TNG characters into what could have been a perfectly good sendoff story.
The changes in network ownership (CBS bought UPN) and scheduling (the show was moved to Friday night, the graveyard of science fiction shows) had more to do with its failures than the storylines. I could have done without "Stormfront" parts 1 and 2 at the beginning of the season but they were okay.
I think the real problem with Enterprise is that the people who believed in and supported the show left the network and were replaced by others who had different priorities.
Enterprise could have gone on to several more seasons with really good story arcs but the threats of cancellation, the weak network support, and the limited distribution reach of UPN all contributed to a false mythology of failure in the show itself.
It was better than its most vocal critics say it was and in rewatching it I feel that Enterprise has stood the test of time better than any other Star Trek series to its day.