Post by jeffgeorge on Apr 9, 2017 16:30:50 GMT -9
I've been doing a lot of GIMP work in the past few weeks, and I often run a video in a tiny window while I work on that sort of thing. (I can't have a video running while I'm writing text or code, but it doesn't interfere with my work on visual projects--different parts of the brain, I suppose.) I noticed that all four seasons of Star Trek: Enterprise were offered for free as part of my Amazon Prime account, so I turned on the very first episode while I worked. I wound up watching all four seasons, episode after episode, in order, from beginning to end. I had not paid much attention to STE when it was on the air, though I didn't think the couple of episodes I'd seen by accident then were as bad as I recall the TOS fans saying it was at the time.
Now that I've seen the whole thing, in order and all the way through, I heartily recommend it be seen and judged that way. The characters grew on me, and eventually I really cared about them. I also think they did a great job of filling in the history that led to TOS, TNG, and the other series. People gripe about how the "Affliction" arc in STE season 4 was just a retcon to cover the TOS Klingons, but if you want to look at it that way, you could say that STE was just a retcon for everything in all the Star Trek series and movies. But I think they did an amazing job of filling in the history leading up to the Federation, and in the process, created a universe that was grittier, richer, and more alive than TOS or TNG ever accomplished. The closing seasons of DS9 was the only other period in which the Star Trek universe seemed as rough, unpredictable, and dangerous for longer than an episode or two.
The first season of STE is a great account of mankind's first, fumbling attempts at exploration. The second season was pretty traditional ST episodic television, with single-episode stories. The third season takes the Enterprise into a new region of space to battle a new foe--the Xindi--in a single story arc lasting the entire season, with every episode building upon the previous one--a significant departure from most of Star Trek tradition. (I seem to recall the last several episodes of DS9 had a continuing story, but I haven't watched that in years, so I don't remember exactly how it was executed.) The fourth season splits the difference, consisting of several stories lasting between two and four episodes each. This is a format that works well for the show, an effective compromise between having to introduce and resolve a story in 40 minutes, and letting a single story take 22 episodes to tell.
I seem to recall that a lot of the Trek fanbase was very unhappy with the Temporal Cold War story line that began in season 1 and continued throughout the first three seasons. Having seen the whole series in a row, without interruption, I have to say that while the TCW was interesting, I think it did hurt the series with the fans for one legitimate reason. Star Trek fans are used to watching the adventures of bold captains as they create history from the bridge of a starship, not following confused and frustrated primitive humans being manipulated like lab rats in a maze, serving the purposes of powerful, enigmatic beings far beyond their understanding. The premise of most of the TCW stories robbed our heroes of agency, reducing them to the status of pawns in a game they--and we--could not understand. Seeing the whole series within a couple of weeks, from inception to resolution, I can focus on the moments when Archer gained the upper hand on all sides in the TCW, but those moments must have seemed frustratingly few and far between for viewers who experienced them spread out over four years.
I think that the series really hit its stride towards the end of season 3--the main characters and their relationships were well developed, and a large cast of engaging recurring characters had accumulated. As the Xindi story concluded, and you could see the seeds of what would become the Federation sprouting, I really had a sense that this was a show that could have gone a long, long way. Which makes wathcing season 4 kind of a sad experience. Not that there was any problem with the quality of the show--if anything, it was better than ever. But the way that season 4 focused on answering questions raised in prior series set later in the timeline gives you a sense that the show runners knew that the show was coming to an end, and that they needed to focus on wrapping up existing Star Trek history rather than building new stories. Not that the story arcs in season 4 aren't good television, or that they don't do a good job of presenting the early history of the Star Trek universe--they are excellent in both these regards. There's just a sense of the series' mortality hanging over its last season, like it has to scramble to cover everything before Paramount turned out the lights on them. So much of the last season of STE is devoted to setting up the Federation and TOS, I was left really wanting to see more of the STE characters living their lives. I wanted to see some period of contentment in the relationship between Tripp and T'Pol--we saw the awkward early stages, and then jump forward several years, to a point in time several years after their relationship had ended. Reed was revealed right at the end of the series to have been some sort of undercover intel agent--something that would have been great to learn more about. And Sato and Mayweather were underutilized throughout the series--I really would have liked to get to know them better away from their on-duty responsibilities.
I suppose that what I'm saying is that STE should have run 7 seasons. We got the first three seasons, in which the show figured out itself, its characters, and its world, and we got the final season, in which it wrapped up all its story lines and tied them back into the greater Star Trek universe. But what we didn't get was seasons 4, 5 and 6, in which we would have had time to really get to know the characters--all of them, and not just Archer. I'm really going to miss those seasons.
Mostly, though, I just wanted to share that having watched STE clear through, every episode, in order, it doesn't deserve the scorn that so many old-guard Trek fans have heaped upon it over the years. It's a damn good show, and deserves to be judged on its own merits, and not against the preconceptions of fanatics of a show that aired three decades earlier.
Now that I've seen the whole thing, in order and all the way through, I heartily recommend it be seen and judged that way. The characters grew on me, and eventually I really cared about them. I also think they did a great job of filling in the history that led to TOS, TNG, and the other series. People gripe about how the "Affliction" arc in STE season 4 was just a retcon to cover the TOS Klingons, but if you want to look at it that way, you could say that STE was just a retcon for everything in all the Star Trek series and movies. But I think they did an amazing job of filling in the history leading up to the Federation, and in the process, created a universe that was grittier, richer, and more alive than TOS or TNG ever accomplished. The closing seasons of DS9 was the only other period in which the Star Trek universe seemed as rough, unpredictable, and dangerous for longer than an episode or two.
The first season of STE is a great account of mankind's first, fumbling attempts at exploration. The second season was pretty traditional ST episodic television, with single-episode stories. The third season takes the Enterprise into a new region of space to battle a new foe--the Xindi--in a single story arc lasting the entire season, with every episode building upon the previous one--a significant departure from most of Star Trek tradition. (I seem to recall the last several episodes of DS9 had a continuing story, but I haven't watched that in years, so I don't remember exactly how it was executed.) The fourth season splits the difference, consisting of several stories lasting between two and four episodes each. This is a format that works well for the show, an effective compromise between having to introduce and resolve a story in 40 minutes, and letting a single story take 22 episodes to tell.
I seem to recall that a lot of the Trek fanbase was very unhappy with the Temporal Cold War story line that began in season 1 and continued throughout the first three seasons. Having seen the whole series in a row, without interruption, I have to say that while the TCW was interesting, I think it did hurt the series with the fans for one legitimate reason. Star Trek fans are used to watching the adventures of bold captains as they create history from the bridge of a starship, not following confused and frustrated primitive humans being manipulated like lab rats in a maze, serving the purposes of powerful, enigmatic beings far beyond their understanding. The premise of most of the TCW stories robbed our heroes of agency, reducing them to the status of pawns in a game they--and we--could not understand. Seeing the whole series within a couple of weeks, from inception to resolution, I can focus on the moments when Archer gained the upper hand on all sides in the TCW, but those moments must have seemed frustratingly few and far between for viewers who experienced them spread out over four years.
I think that the series really hit its stride towards the end of season 3--the main characters and their relationships were well developed, and a large cast of engaging recurring characters had accumulated. As the Xindi story concluded, and you could see the seeds of what would become the Federation sprouting, I really had a sense that this was a show that could have gone a long, long way. Which makes wathcing season 4 kind of a sad experience. Not that there was any problem with the quality of the show--if anything, it was better than ever. But the way that season 4 focused on answering questions raised in prior series set later in the timeline gives you a sense that the show runners knew that the show was coming to an end, and that they needed to focus on wrapping up existing Star Trek history rather than building new stories. Not that the story arcs in season 4 aren't good television, or that they don't do a good job of presenting the early history of the Star Trek universe--they are excellent in both these regards. There's just a sense of the series' mortality hanging over its last season, like it has to scramble to cover everything before Paramount turned out the lights on them. So much of the last season of STE is devoted to setting up the Federation and TOS, I was left really wanting to see more of the STE characters living their lives. I wanted to see some period of contentment in the relationship between Tripp and T'Pol--we saw the awkward early stages, and then jump forward several years, to a point in time several years after their relationship had ended. Reed was revealed right at the end of the series to have been some sort of undercover intel agent--something that would have been great to learn more about. And Sato and Mayweather were underutilized throughout the series--I really would have liked to get to know them better away from their on-duty responsibilities.
I suppose that what I'm saying is that STE should have run 7 seasons. We got the first three seasons, in which the show figured out itself, its characters, and its world, and we got the final season, in which it wrapped up all its story lines and tied them back into the greater Star Trek universe. But what we didn't get was seasons 4, 5 and 6, in which we would have had time to really get to know the characters--all of them, and not just Archer. I'm really going to miss those seasons.
Mostly, though, I just wanted to share that having watched STE clear through, every episode, in order, it doesn't deserve the scorn that so many old-guard Trek fans have heaped upon it over the years. It's a damn good show, and deserves to be judged on its own merits, and not against the preconceptions of fanatics of a show that aired three decades earlier.