Trek Throwback Thursday: Star Trek Enterprise Retrospective

Throwback Thursday

Star Trek Enterprise Retrospective

Intro

The fifth Star Trek (live action) series.  The last series of the Berman era of Star Trek.  The oddball of the Berman era trek shows.  Airing for 4 seasons on UPN from 2001-2005 Star Trek Enterprise (originally just Enterprise Enterprise) was created by Rick Berman and Brannon Braga as a prequel series, taking place in the 2150s, Enterprise tells the story of the first warp 5 starship, the Enterprise NX-01 and its crew, humanity dipping its toes into deep space for the first time.  The "right stuff" pioneering days of Starfleet's interstellar exploration, before the founding of the Federation.  Before energy shields, tractor beams, holodecks and replicators.  When things like the transporter were still experimental.  A sound premise, and a good chance to explore a heretofore mostly unknown era of the trek timeline.  Until the network brass decided they had to meddle.  Thankfully Berman and Braga fought to stave off the worst of the networks suggestions (like a boy band in the ship's mess hall).  Unfortunately the network did insist on things like the Temporal Cold War, an ongoing time-travel story arc that truth be told does not really belong in a prequel series about the pioneering days of interstellar exploration.  Unlike its predecessors Enterprise would be filmed in 1:88:1 aspect ratio instead of traditional 4:3.  Also unlike its predecessors but very much of its time, Enterprise would be the first Star Trek series to use no physical ship models and rely 100% on CGI.  Another thing that made the series stand out from its predecessors was the theme song.  Instead of using an original orchestral piece for the series theme song the producers decided to use an existing song, Diane Warren's "Faith of the Heart" (first written for the movie Patch Adams) and have it shortened and rerecorded for the series (the version used on Enterprise is officially titled "Where My Heart will Take Me") by Russell Watson.  More on my opinions of the theme song here.  Visually the show meets with some success trying to walk a fine aesthetic line between now (NASA) and the TOS era (the mid 23rd century).

Season 1

The series starts with the pilot Broken Bow parts 1 and 2 which sees first contact with the Klingons, the launch of the NX-01 Enterprise on a mission to return a Klingon courier whose ship crashed on Earth back to Qo'Nos, and the temporal cold war.  The episode also establishes the main characters: Captain Johnathan Archer (Scott Bakula) whose father created the warp 5 engine, Subcommander T'Pol (Jolene Blalock) the Vulcan science officer and first officer, chief engineer Charles "Trip" Tucker III (Conner Trineer), armory officer Malcolm Reed (Dominic Keating), the Denobulan Dr. Phlox from the Interspecies Medical Exchange (John Billingsley), communications officer Ensign Hoshi Sato (Linda Park) and "space boomer" helm officer Ensign Travis Mayweather (Anthony Montgomery).  Also introduced in the pilot are recurring characters Admiral Maxwell Forrest (trek regular guest star Vaughn Armstrong), Silik the Suliban (John Fleck) and Vulcan ambassador Soval (Gary Graham).  The early episodes of the season mostly focus on the earliest days of the NX-01's exploration mission, including first contact with several species, notably the Axanari (Fight or Flight) and the Andorians (The Andorian Incident, which introduces the Andorian Commander Shran played by Jeffrey Combs).  Cold Front brings back the Temporal Cold War storyline (a network mandate), a century spanning conflict being fought by different factions in different time periods.  As Brannon Braga himself has admitted, this would have better been its own show, not part of a Star Trek prequel.  Cold Front also introduces temporal agent Daniels from the 31st century, a temporal agent working for the Federation (apparently) faction in the Temporal Cold War, played by Matt Winston.  Dear Doctor gives us the first close look into Dr. Phlox and explores a civilization with classism/specism and an AIDS-like disease and debates helping versus noninterference, the kind of moral argument that many other trek series would tackle vis-a-vis the Prime Directive.  Shadows of P'Jem revisits the political fallout of the events of The Andorian Incident.  Shuttlepod One centers around Trip Tucker and Malcolm Reed stranded in a shuttlepod and provides a strong foundation for their long friendship (a-la Bashir/O'Brien or Paris/Kim).  Fusion establishes a stigma (at this point in time) around the Vulcan Mind Meld, and the V'tosh ka'tur (Vulcans with emotion).  Acquisition shows an apparently forgotten in future centuries contact between the NX-01 and the Ferengi (who never identify their species by name for obvious reasons), while the penultimate episode Two Days and Two Nights features the NX-01 making humanities first trip to Risa.  Another time travel centered Temporal Cold War story ends the season and opens season 2 in Shockwave parts 1 and 2.  So far so good.

Season 2

Following Shockwave part 2 Season 2 opened strong with Carbon Creek, the true story of the real first visit to Earth by Vulcans in the 1950s and Minefield, which gives us first contact with the Romulans.  Minefield's story is left open, being completed in Dead Stop where the NX-01 gets repairs from a mysterious automated space station.  Most of the rest of the season is relatively weak with only a very few standout episodes.  Future Tense revisits the Temporal Cold War, Regeneration gives us a sequel of sorts to Star Trek First Contact with a Borg encounter (it's still better than Acquisition), Horizon sees the ECS Horizon, Mayweather's family's cargo ship and finally provides some much overdue exploration and backstory for the character and First Flight flashes back to the early days of the NX program.  The season ends on a major cliffhanger with The Expanse which ties the Temporal Cold War to a new threat to humanity, the Xindi, who have attacked Earth killing 7 million people, including Trip's sister.  This episode and the Xindi storyline in season 3 were mainly created to rejuvenate the series and boost ratings, which had sagged considerably over the season due to weak stories and franchise fatigue.  While season 1 often fell back on familiar, sometimes tired Trek tropes, in season 2 the creative fatigue really started to show.  The Xindi attack on Earth was an obvious parallel to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks which had occurred just a few weeks before the series premiere.  Brannon Braga has said in interviews that by this point, after over a decade on Star Trek (4 seasons of TNG, all of Voyager and 2 movies) he was feeling extremely burnt out.  He has also mentioned not having many of his fellow writers from the earlier Trek shows (Ronald D. Moore, Joe Menosky, Rene Echevarria, Naren Shankar etc.) on Enterprise.  This lack of experienced Trek writers definitely shows in the stark difference in quality of many of season 1 and 2 episodes.  That said there was some good writing talent on Enterprise, including Voyager alum Phyllis Strong and Mike Sussman. 

Season 3

Unlike the previous seasons, season 3 is heavily serialized, telling the story of the NX-01's journey through the Delphic Expanse to find the mysterious Xindi and stop their next superweapon which would totally destroy Earth.  the crew learn that the Xindi are not a single species but five extant and one extinct species: Xindi-Reptillians, Xindi-Primates, Xindi-Avians, Xindi-Arboreals, Xindi-Insectoids and Xindi-Aquatics.  They also learn that the anomalies in the Delphic Expanse are being created by a series of giant spheres built by an extra-dimensional species known as the Sphere-Builders, who are manipulating the Xindi to destroy humanity.  Impulse gives us a good look at addiction and withdrawal when T'Pol becomes addicted to Trellium-D (a thread throughout the season).  Twilight is a very poignant alternate timeline what-if story set some 10 years hence in a timeline in which the Xindi destroyed Earth and almost all of humanity, with Archer infected with a parasite and unable to form new memories.  Azati Prime sees Archer captured by the Xindi-Reptilians and later addressing the Xindi Council, while a Xindi-Reptilian attack very nearly destroys the Enterprise.  Damage picks up where Azati prime leaves off and shows the aftermath of the battle, severe damage to the ship, over a dozen crew dead, Archer having to make some hard choice to obtain the materials to repair the ship.  The Forgotten looks closer at the emotional toll of the loss of so many casualties on the crew, and sees Trip come to terms with his feelings after losing his sister.  E² sees a generation ship version of the NX-01 from an alternate timeline in which the ship was thrown over a century into the past.  The Council, Countdown, and Zero Hour show the final showdown with the Xindi-Reptilians who have stolen the Xindi superweapon and launched it toward Earth.  Zero Hour ends the season with the destruction of the Xindi weapon by Captain Archer and the spheres by the rest of the crew (and with the spheres, the Delphic Expanse itself) and the apparent death of Captain Archer.  Overall the season was better than the last 2, despite being heavily serialized.  This season saw the shows name changed from Enterprise to Star Trek Enterprise and a remixed version of the somewhat contentious theme song.  Also this season saw a change in the writers room with the arrival of Manny Coto to take on the heavy lifting from Berman and Braga. 

Season 4

The final season opens with the Storm Front two-parter, which sees the NX-01 and Archer sent back in time to an alternate timeline WWII in which the Na'kuhl from the 29th century have given the Nazis future weapons tech to allow them to win the war in exchange for the materials to build a portal to travel to a point in the future before their eventual defeat.  Archer and co. stop the Na'kuhl and thus correct the timeline and end the Temporal Cold War.  Truth be told, this two-parter and the return of the temporal cold war coming after the conclusion of the epic season long Xindi story arc really takes the wind out of what would have otherwise been a thrilling and well-earned ending to the NX-01s heroic fight to save Earth from destruction by the Xindi.  Home serves as a homecoming for Enterprise and its crew and sees the crew get a well-deserved hero's welcome and is mostly a character piece (a-la TNGs Family), focusing on the crew mentally recovering from their recent adventures as well as some unfortunate but understandable xenophobic sentiments on Earth.  The rest of the season is mostly 2 and 3 part episodes.  Borderland/Cold Station 12/The Augments gives us Brent Spiner as Dr. Arik Soong, a geneticist who wants to bring back Eugenics War era augments a-la Khan.  The Forge/Awakening/Kir'Shara is a Vulcan centric arc which satisfactorily reconciles the Vulcans depicted hitherto in Enterprise (paranoid, anti-Earth exploring on its own, and generally assholes) with the Vulcans we know and love from the 23rd and 24th centuries.  The three-parter also gives us Kara Zediker as T'Pau the famous Vulcan originally played by Celia Lovsky in TOS Amok Time.  Daedalus introduces us to Emory Erikson, inventor of the transporter.  Babel One/United/the Aenar shows us the formation of the Coalition, the pre-Federation alliance against the growing Romulan threat and hints at the Earth-Romulan War to come.  The Aenar also introduced the titular species, a blind, telepathic albino subspecies of Andorians, of which SNW season 1 chief engineer Hemmer is a member.  Affliction and Divergence explains the difference in appearance between TOS smooth forehead Klingons and ENT and TNG onwards ridged Klingons.  This two-parter also saw the launch of the second NX class starship, the NX-02 Columbia.  In a Mirror, Darkly is set entirely in the mirror universe (complete with mirror universe title sequence) and serves as both a prequel to TOS Mirror, Mirror and a sequel to TOS The Tholian Web, with the USS Defiant from the latter episode having travelled through the interphase rift to the year 2155 in the mirror universe.  The penultimate two-parter (which many would say should be the finale) Demons and Terra Prime sees the NX-01 crew stop a plot by a xenophobic group to remove all aliens from Earth and destroy the growing coalition.  Terra Prime ends with one of Captain Archer's greatest speeches:

"Up until about a hundred years ago, there was one question that burned in every Human, that made us study the stars and dream of traveling to them. Are we alone? Our generation is privileged to know the answer to that question. We are all explorers driven to know what's over the horizon, what's beyond our own shores. And yet the more I've experienced, the more I've learned that no matter how far we travel, or how fast we get there, the most profound discoveries are not necessarily beyond that next star. They're within us, woven into the threads that bind us, all of us, to each other. A final frontier begins in this hall. Let's explore it together."

This is pure Gene Roddenberry.  It's the very heart of what Star Trek is and has been about since the Original Series.  This would have been a great note for the season to end on, had the show continued forward.  But alas...

Then there's the series finale, These Are The Voyages..., a sort of coda to the series more than a finale, in which Commander Riker and Counselor Troi on the Enterprise-D revisit the final mission of the NX-01 (six years after the previous episode) and the signing of the Federation charter on the holodeck during the events of TNGs The Pegasus.  The episode also kills off Trip Tucker, one of many unpopular things in this episode.  (For more on this episode's issues see my Worst of Star Trek Enterprise post).  Going into season 4 the cast and crew knew the show was going to be cancelled (mainly due to lagging ratings and disagreements between UPN head Les Moonves and Executive Producer/Creator Rick Berman.  The writing was quite strong this season, mainly due to Manny Coto, now head writer/executive producer and writers Andre Bormanis and Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens.  With the exception of the finale Berman and Braga had no involvement with writing this season.

What Might Have Been

As for what might have been had the show not been cancelled?  In interviews in the years since, the Reeves-Stevenses have said that had the show had a fifth seasons, it would have been structured much like season four with two and three parters.  More coalition stories, more tie-ins to the lore and nods to TOS, and ultimately the lead up to the oft-mentioned but never seen Earth-Romulan War.  Doug Drexler, visual artists and designer of the NX-01 has said that he envisioned a major refit for the NX-01 which would add a secondary hull to the ship, making it slightly more similar to the TOS ship.  This has been canonized in Star Trek Picard season 3, in "Bounty" the NX-01 refitted with a secondary hull can be seen at the fleet museum.

Conclusion and Legacy

Is Star Trek Enterprise a bad series?  No.  Is it great Star Trek?  No.  As a prequel (in the days before Hollywood prequel-itis) the show had a good premise going back in time in the Trek universe instead of forward.  That said the show had a lot working against it.  Franchise fatigue for the series writers and the fans was a big issue, especially with Star Trek having been on the air continuously for almost 15 years when the series started.  In season 1 and especially season 2 stories started to feel stale and unoriginal, or worse ripped off or retold stories from previous episodes (or even brought in elements that at this point in the Trek timeline are anachronistic (Ferengi in Acquisition, Borg in Regeneration).  The effects of network meddling also hindered the series, forcing the writers to include the Temporal Cold War time travel element.  Another thing that I feel hindered the series was trying to walk the line between realistically depicting the shows primitive versions of iconic Trek technologies (read plot devices) like the transporter realistically without losing them so much that it doesn't feel like Star Trek (in the case of the transporter, which was initially only used in emergencies and the crew were scared of it, after a relatively short time the crew magically became comfortable with it and it became as normal as in any other Trek series).  That all said, Star Trek Enterprise occupies a unique place in the franchise.  Being the only series in its particular timeframe it is the only real look we get at that period in Trek history.  It made a valiant attempt to bridge some of the gap between the 2063 of First Contact and TOS.  It also has the unfortunate reputation of being the show that ended the Berman-trek era and lead to Trek being off the air for 12 years.  Despite all its shortcomings Enterprise is still a decent and dare I say underrated series and an important part of the Star Trek franchise.