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As of a few seconds ago as I write this (though by the time I finish this it'll probably be more like an hour or three), with the viewing of the final episode of Enterprise, I can now say that I have finally seen all of Star Trek. It took me a while. (And, looking back through my LJ, I notice that I never made any posts about TAS, TNG, or DS9 for whatever reasons, even though I definitely watched those as well. Probably because I didn't have much to complain about with those, I guess. I'm pretty sure I probably made posts about them on Facebook or Twitter, but I'm not going to bother searching through all of that to link it here. Suffice it to say that The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine were probably my favorite two series, and I can't really pick between them which is more my favorite, to be honest. The Animated Series was pretty good for what it was, I guess. Better than I expected it would be going into it, at least.)
So, now I'm going to talk about Enterprise. Here's my overall assessment of it: it's not nearly as bad as most people seem to say it is. I mean, sure, there were some stinkers in there definitely, but I'd say that what I'd consider to be the worst of Enterprise is nowhere near as bad as what I consider to be the worst of Voyager.
Now, a bit more in depth. I like the first two seasons best. Aside from an occasional two-parter, they were mostly unconnected episodes, similar to most of TOS or TNG. More TOS than TNG, though, in that the first two seasons had more of a sense of whimsy to them that was sort of lost in the third and fourth seasons, though the earlier episodes could be serious enough when they wanted to be.
In the third season, though, the series underwent a rather dramatic tone shift. Earth is attacked by the Xindi in the season two finale, as part of yet another facet of the Temporal Cold War storyline that spanned the series for most of the first three seasons (and then was pretty suddenly and shoddily resolved at the end of the Nazi two-parter I linked above). Seven million people are killed by a prototype weapon, and all of season three is the search by Enterprise for the big brother of this prototype. Archer becomes sort of an asshole at times during this season, torturing people and even at one point raiding an innocent ship to steal their warp drive, since the one on Enterprise had been disabled with no hope of repair in time to complete the mission. The whole season had vague shades of the Dominion War arc from Deep Space Nine, but I didn't like it nearly as much. It just seemed to get too dark and gritty just for the sake of being dark and gritty, especially after the relatively light stuff that came before.
The fourth season was sort of a mix between the first two seasons and the third, both in tone and in how the season was structured. Rather than being a bunch of stand alone episodes like seasons one & two or an entire season devoted to just one thing (the Xindi storyline), season 4 was a series of mostly unconnected two- and three-part episodes. The tone was lighter than the heavy Xindi plotline, but it never really regained the lightness of the beginning. Still, I liked season four for all of the shoutouts to later (or earlier, from a production standpoint) series, such as the Augment storyline, which had Brent Spiner playing an ancestor of Noonian Soong, or the Kir'Shara arc, which involved the katra of Surak and a young T'Pau (the Vulcan matriarch at Spock's wedding), or the "here is why Klingons didn't have forehead ridges in the Original Series" two-parter, or the Mirror Universe episodes. Especially that last one. It was probably my favorite of the episodes that involved the Mirror Universe out of all of the series that did them, because not only was it set entirely in the Mirror Universe with no interaction with the Prime Universe cast at all, but it also involved a bit of time travel as well. It really was so cool to see a Constitution-class ship from the future just completely wrecking contemporary ships, regardless of anything else that went on in those episodes. Here is a video of the USS Defiant (no, not that one) totally owning everything (set to music from the Pirates of the Caribbean for some weird reason). Oh, and the special intro they used just for those two episodes was awesome, as well.
The series finale... a lot of people seem to revile this because it was actually more of a Next Generation episode than it was an episode of Enterprise. I can see why that would be the case, given that the entire thing is indeed a holodeck simulation being run by Will Riker during the events of the Next Gen episode "The Pegasus" (with a clearly visibly older Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis as guest stars), but I actually liked it. What I didn't particularly care for, however, was that they (spoiler alert) killed off one of the main cast for no good reason and in a kind of stupid way, apparently just to do it because it was the last episode. Well, you can't win them all, I guess. The final scene was pretty damn cool, though.
I mentioned the special Mirror Universe intro above, so I'll talk a bit about the regular intros as well. As with DS9 where I much preferred the earlier, slower version of the intro to the later, faster version (man, I hate that stupid, unnecessary bassline), it is the same with Enterprise. I liked the more mellow version they used for seasons 1 & 2 more than the somewhat peppier version they used for seasons 3 & 4 (especially given that the tone shifted in the exact opposite direction). Also, it was a bit weird when I recently found out that the Enterprise theme apparently came from the Patch Adams soundtrack originally. Aside from that, they were apparently going to use something called Archer's theme as the main theme, originally, but instead ended up using "Where My Heart Will Take Me" (which is the name of the Enterprise theme, as opposed to "Faith of the Heart" from Patch Adams, even though they're more or less the same thing). They did use a version of Archer's theme as the closing credits theme, at least, so there's that. But anyway, I did actually still like the Enterprise theme (a longer version in that link there, compared to the TV edits, and also properly pitched, as opposed to the two previously linked versions, which are slightly higher pitched than what was actually on TV for some reason), compared to a lot of people who seem to hate it because it was different from the more orchestral stuff that had come before.
So, yeah, I have to say that I liked Enterprise quite a bit. Out of all of the casts on all of the various shows, I honestly have to say that I probably liked that of Enterprise the best. Sure, Archer became somewhat of a dick at times later on, and T'Pol had a giant stick up her ass early on (though she greatly improved on that count as the series progressed), the crew as a whole just seemed to have more chemistry together than most of the others, outside of a few special cases like the Kirk/Spock/McCoy power trio or the friendship between Data and Geordi. Also, with the exception of McCoy, the most entertaining doctors on Star Trek have been the non-human ones, as proven by the holographic Doctor on Voyager and now Phlox on Enterprise. For that matter, in general, the alien characters have been more interesting/entertaining than the human ones (Spock, Data, Odo, the Doctor), though there were exceptions to that (Neelix). Speaking of Neelix, I originally thought Phlox was just going to be a poor-man's Neelix, but I ended up liking him better than Neelix, by far. To compare captains, I certainly wouldn't say Archer beats out Kirk or Picard or even Sisko, but I'd say he's at least on par with Janeway (though that's not saying much, since both Archer and Janeway had quite a few more Idiot Ball and Designated Hero moments than any of the others, even taking Sisko's "In the Pale Moonlight" into account).
One last thing. Jeffrey Combs is my second favorite recurring Trek guest star, after John de Lancie. Between Brunt and Weyoun on Deep Space Nine and now Shran on Enterprise, he was just awesome. Shran was a really good antagonist/rival/bro for Archer.
So, what now? Maybe I'll move on to the movies later. After that, maybe I'll give the fan-made stuff another look, since it's been a while. Or maybe the games (though definitely not the one based on reboot Trek).
So, now I'm going to talk about Enterprise. Here's my overall assessment of it: it's not nearly as bad as most people seem to say it is. I mean, sure, there were some stinkers in there definitely, but I'd say that what I'd consider to be the worst of Enterprise is nowhere near as bad as what I consider to be the worst of Voyager.
Now, a bit more in depth. I like the first two seasons best. Aside from an occasional two-parter, they were mostly unconnected episodes, similar to most of TOS or TNG. More TOS than TNG, though, in that the first two seasons had more of a sense of whimsy to them that was sort of lost in the third and fourth seasons, though the earlier episodes could be serious enough when they wanted to be.
In the third season, though, the series underwent a rather dramatic tone shift. Earth is attacked by the Xindi in the season two finale, as part of yet another facet of the Temporal Cold War storyline that spanned the series for most of the first three seasons (and then was pretty suddenly and shoddily resolved at the end of the Nazi two-parter I linked above). Seven million people are killed by a prototype weapon, and all of season three is the search by Enterprise for the big brother of this prototype. Archer becomes sort of an asshole at times during this season, torturing people and even at one point raiding an innocent ship to steal their warp drive, since the one on Enterprise had been disabled with no hope of repair in time to complete the mission. The whole season had vague shades of the Dominion War arc from Deep Space Nine, but I didn't like it nearly as much. It just seemed to get too dark and gritty just for the sake of being dark and gritty, especially after the relatively light stuff that came before.
The fourth season was sort of a mix between the first two seasons and the third, both in tone and in how the season was structured. Rather than being a bunch of stand alone episodes like seasons one & two or an entire season devoted to just one thing (the Xindi storyline), season 4 was a series of mostly unconnected two- and three-part episodes. The tone was lighter than the heavy Xindi plotline, but it never really regained the lightness of the beginning. Still, I liked season four for all of the shoutouts to later (or earlier, from a production standpoint) series, such as the Augment storyline, which had Brent Spiner playing an ancestor of Noonian Soong, or the Kir'Shara arc, which involved the katra of Surak and a young T'Pau (the Vulcan matriarch at Spock's wedding), or the "here is why Klingons didn't have forehead ridges in the Original Series" two-parter, or the Mirror Universe episodes. Especially that last one. It was probably my favorite of the episodes that involved the Mirror Universe out of all of the series that did them, because not only was it set entirely in the Mirror Universe with no interaction with the Prime Universe cast at all, but it also involved a bit of time travel as well. It really was so cool to see a Constitution-class ship from the future just completely wrecking contemporary ships, regardless of anything else that went on in those episodes. Here is a video of the USS Defiant (no, not that one) totally owning everything (set to music from the Pirates of the Caribbean for some weird reason). Oh, and the special intro they used just for those two episodes was awesome, as well.
The series finale... a lot of people seem to revile this because it was actually more of a Next Generation episode than it was an episode of Enterprise. I can see why that would be the case, given that the entire thing is indeed a holodeck simulation being run by Will Riker during the events of the Next Gen episode "The Pegasus" (with a clearly visibly older Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis as guest stars), but I actually liked it. What I didn't particularly care for, however, was that they (spoiler alert) killed off one of the main cast for no good reason and in a kind of stupid way, apparently just to do it because it was the last episode. Well, you can't win them all, I guess. The final scene was pretty damn cool, though.
I mentioned the special Mirror Universe intro above, so I'll talk a bit about the regular intros as well. As with DS9 where I much preferred the earlier, slower version of the intro to the later, faster version (man, I hate that stupid, unnecessary bassline), it is the same with Enterprise. I liked the more mellow version they used for seasons 1 & 2 more than the somewhat peppier version they used for seasons 3 & 4 (especially given that the tone shifted in the exact opposite direction). Also, it was a bit weird when I recently found out that the Enterprise theme apparently came from the Patch Adams soundtrack originally. Aside from that, they were apparently going to use something called Archer's theme as the main theme, originally, but instead ended up using "Where My Heart Will Take Me" (which is the name of the Enterprise theme, as opposed to "Faith of the Heart" from Patch Adams, even though they're more or less the same thing). They did use a version of Archer's theme as the closing credits theme, at least, so there's that. But anyway, I did actually still like the Enterprise theme (a longer version in that link there, compared to the TV edits, and also properly pitched, as opposed to the two previously linked versions, which are slightly higher pitched than what was actually on TV for some reason), compared to a lot of people who seem to hate it because it was different from the more orchestral stuff that had come before.
So, yeah, I have to say that I liked Enterprise quite a bit. Out of all of the casts on all of the various shows, I honestly have to say that I probably liked that of Enterprise the best. Sure, Archer became somewhat of a dick at times later on, and T'Pol had a giant stick up her ass early on (though she greatly improved on that count as the series progressed), the crew as a whole just seemed to have more chemistry together than most of the others, outside of a few special cases like the Kirk/Spock/McCoy power trio or the friendship between Data and Geordi. Also, with the exception of McCoy, the most entertaining doctors on Star Trek have been the non-human ones, as proven by the holographic Doctor on Voyager and now Phlox on Enterprise. For that matter, in general, the alien characters have been more interesting/entertaining than the human ones (Spock, Data, Odo, the Doctor), though there were exceptions to that (Neelix). Speaking of Neelix, I originally thought Phlox was just going to be a poor-man's Neelix, but I ended up liking him better than Neelix, by far. To compare captains, I certainly wouldn't say Archer beats out Kirk or Picard or even Sisko, but I'd say he's at least on par with Janeway (though that's not saying much, since both Archer and Janeway had quite a few more Idiot Ball and Designated Hero moments than any of the others, even taking Sisko's "In the Pale Moonlight" into account).
One last thing. Jeffrey Combs is my second favorite recurring Trek guest star, after John de Lancie. Between Brunt and Weyoun on Deep Space Nine and now Shran on Enterprise, he was just awesome. Shran was a really good antagonist/rival/bro for Archer.
So, what now? Maybe I'll move on to the movies later. After that, maybe I'll give the fan-made stuff another look, since it's been a while. Or maybe the games (though definitely not the one based on reboot Trek).
