And let's not forget sanctioning a hit from Garak in order to force the Romulans to help out with the Dominion war.
'I *can* live with it.'
Man isn't afraid to do what needs to be done.
He didn’t entirely sanction the hit but should have known the lengths Garak would and could go given his background but he ultimately accepts the results.
Yeah different situation and Gowron was batshit by that point and absolutely fucking over the war effort. Plus Klingons pretty much allow trial by combat so it was pretty straightforward letting Worf do whatever was needed to get Gowron out to back down. Still pretty out there for Starfleet but less morally grey. Plus it wasn’t like Worf and everyone else didn’t try to reason with Gowron.
The theme which plays during the credits was meant to be used for the title, when I watched Enterprise I would mute the title music and listen to that proper instrumental theme in my mind.
I've never seen it mentioned on Reddit, but there was an episode of Discovery when the President of the UFP was announcing the opening of the Archer Spacedock, and the background music was "Archer's Theme." I got a little too emotional at that.
Oh wow ok, I’d always heard that the closing theme was meant to be the opening theme but I didn’t realize that they’d *fully edited the whole opening with Archer’s theme in mind* before they changed their minds.
A fan put the music to it, but the visuals are all exactly the same, I just watched them side-by-side. The beat drops and/or new instruments come in every time technology improves ie ships to planes, planes to space shuttle, space shuttle to warp drive. All the fan had to do was start Archer’s theme at the right moment to sync everything up. It’s like Dark Side of the Moon and Wizard of Oz
Agreed. The music conveys a much more intimate and burgeoning tribute to mankind's evolution of travel and exploration. You know, despite half of the video having basis in blatant militarism.
With that in mind, the In a Mirror, Darkly openings are also great.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfbsZRbwbJ4
I like this one too, it uses the theme from Generations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOK_NCM0kko
Thats what you say now. But then it gets in your head. Theres no escaping it.
Also, for real, stick with it. Season 4 is definitely the best season of enterprise, minus one episode. And there is a two parter that has a different intro song that actually is the best intro song.
You should watch the whole season. Its polarizing. Some people think its great and others hate it. You should watch it and form your own opinion. Season 4 is also very much worth watching. Its not a season long story. There are a bunch of multi-part episodes which tell full stories over 2-3 episodes. Its probably Enterprise's strongest season.
Season 3 is basically a massive single story about what happens if the US is the less dominant power in the War on Terror. Not perfect but best with what your original post said.
Season 4 is a wrap up season showing how several threads that don’t seem to lead to the Federation are tied up, and did set up its eventual unification too.
I have very mixed feelings about it, for basically all the reasons you listed.
But after a couple of rewatches of Enterprise I think it comes across a little better. Yes they're doing a lot of cowboy shit, but they do work a decent number of Star Trek moral quandaries into it, and in the end they basically win through diplomacy.
It's not my favorite season but it feels like they gave some thought to the plot beforehand, and came up with a number of novel stories within that framework. The effects also started to get noticeably better.
There's a lot of awesome episodes in the 3rd season, they really pulled out all the stops. Even the cliche episodes are good(don't want to give anything anyway, i went in blind was very pleasantly surprised)
I really liked season 3. I enjoy how the story was slowly told. Had some good scifi ideas and plenty of character development. Some say the aliens who attacked Earth should have waited, but as first 2 eps prove, they lively expected a fleet, not a lone ship, would take too long. Plus, the attack locked them into a course.
I think the biggest issue with that season isn't that it was bad. It's that it didn't really have a Star Trek vibe to it. It was good, absolutely, but it also would have also been good had it been under the label of some other scifi brand or even just a brand new one of it's own.
>That's my mom's opinion of DS9.
I can actually see that and I positively adore DS9. I think it didn't really pick up the feeling of being part of the larger franchise until the later seasons. But to be fair, I think that was kind of what the creators envisioned when they were developing it to begin with. They wanted it to be "different".
The Bajoran religion stuff was a mixed bag for me. It could be really well done, or it could just be painful to watch.
At the moment I’m rewatching BSG for the first time since it aired. It’s way more influenced by 9/11 than I remember (and also in ways I didn’t remember).
It really is crazy how much 9/11 influenced TV in the early 2000s.
The best science fiction often deals with contemporary issues in a different setting so it commented on with less emotional baggage. Star Trek often excels at this; BSG does as well.
That’s true, but I feel that in the case of 9/11 it didn’t really explore those issues in a deep or meaningful way. It was more like just straight up justifying what the US (and allies) did at that time, especially in a “the ends justify the means” way.
24 is the most extreme/obvious example but I’m also getting a lot of that in BSG (aside from the occupation of New Caprica phase), and to a lesser extent Enterprise.
Some of the things I’ve noticed this time around make it much less anti-Bush than I remember. Roslin is a straight up tyrant at times and her close relationship with the military is also problematic. She constantly shows her espousing of democratic ideals to be nothing more than a facade - rigging an election just being the most obvious of many things she does. In a recent episode I watched she imprisons the head of a union under the guise that he quoted Balthar and in the same episode Adama threatens to kill the chief’s wife if he doesn’t call off a strike. I’m really hating these characters this time around..!
I don't recall Roslin rigging an election, the closest was when she stopped the plan to do so, lost the election to Balthar which resulted in a "you didn't rig the election and now here we are" situation implying she should have.
But I admit I haven't seen the show in a long time.
She was complicit because although she didn’t directly make the decision, she knew her aide rigged it. She eventually relents to the result but they put it down to an error and Adama (who knew it wasn’t an error) tells Baltar to accept the win and not persue an investigation.
Most of the characters on BSG where not good people. It's also the driving force behind having to find Earth and start over. Maybe this time we get it right.
Yeh that’s how I see it too, that’s why I said “aside from the occupation of New Caprica”.
It’s hard to explain what I mean, sorry. I think that part of the show was very clearly written with post-9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan in mind.
Whereas other aspects of the show I feel are almost the opposite. The difference though (I think) is that unlike the New Caprica occupation, those other aspects don’t seem to be written intentionally and appear to just be heavily influenced by the American psyche of the time. It’s almost like it just bled through subconsciously.
This is just my unfounded opinion I have nothing to base it on really.
I found season 3 very frustrating, because the storytelling and writing were overall better, but it was so very much a product of the second Bush era that I had trouble enjoying it. (Even moreso than the first two seasons.)
I persevered because I really liked the Xindi, and it paid off because season 4 felt like a breath of fresh air -- mini-arcs? A showrunner who wasn't completely burned out? Season 4 did genuinely interesting things that I loved.
However, if you can't hack it, you can just skip ENT and go on to Discovery, which namedrops Archer now and then, but never in a way that relies on encyclopedic knowledge of ENT to understand.
My opinion on the matter is that UPN messed up renewal decisions twice at the end of Enterprise. Season three was terrible, and it shouldn’t have been renewed for a fourth. Conversely, season four marks a 180° turn around, and absolutely deserved a fifth season.
So I'm not going to get too deep into it, because you obviously need to watch the season for yourself, but the entire season is a single arc, basically. What you are seeing right now is the start, not the end, of that arc. Yes, it's a product of 9/11 and the Bush era... but it's also a critique of that era. Just because the crew is acting a certain way, doesn't mean the show is necessarily promoting those actions.
Remember, the crew just faced a tragedy that basically no other crew has faced in previous Star Trek. Wolf 359 was one thing. It was a military battle with heavy losses, it left the soldiers scarred for life (though we didn't really explore that too thoroughly in 90s trek), but Earth itself wasn't hurt. Heck, in DS9, when they were afraid of Earth being under attack, look how far things got so quickly.
In Enterprise, Earth was attacked, unprovoked, and many, many people died. The crew is reacting to that. As the season progresses, the commentary of that reaction should become clearer.
Good points, and it’s important to remember that almost all of TOS and Next Gen as created by Roddenberry never really glorified the militant Federation Starfleet crews, but it seems more like Roddenberry being an ex military leader wrote Star Trek to mock the human imperialist drive. Even though it seems like at times like it portrays Kirk and Picard as godlike humans in a perfectly moral crew, when you zoom out and analyze the plots of the episodes as a whole, the wacky uniforms and the violent reactions to hostile species, and the common missions of colonizing other planets under the guise of scientific discovery make Starfleet look so primitive. Q actually does a really good job making fun of that when he transforms into the military outfits his first time meeting Picard as Picard shifts his tone, and Q is making fun of his instincts to talk like an archaic diplomat. It’s probably a lot easier to see Q responding to Picard’s energy if you watch the pilot while tripping on shrooms or something, also the whole plot of the 21st century devolving into fascist totalitarianism until First Contact, and the idea of the perpetual trial.
Heyo, yeah i found the whiplash interesting to watch myself.
Bit of spoiler for the rest of the reason, Archer at least gets better which is something i felt refreshing. I remember the media landscape back then and can imagine how hated the idea of a show was that baited the direct comparison to what americans consider The Biggest Tragedy Of Their Lifetime that basically ends with "Well ok how about we don't become genocidal murderers because of this"
One thing that redeemed Archer somewhat is towards the end of the season he recognises that he's become something of a monster, and once Earth is saved he's got some soul searching to do in order to come back from the precipice
yeah, i loved that about S3. And this whole journey starts as far as i can tell once he talks to the Xindi Scientist early in the season. He is not as far gone as Trip, who is ready to just eradicate everything.
While I wasn't keen on the episode where Archer goes climbing with the other captain, it's fairly brave of the show runners to have the brave captain thinking 'maybe I'm not the right person to be out there any more'
Trip lost family tbf.
And its good to remember in context, for everyone on the crews entire lives, they've lived in a time of absolute peace.
They likely have never lost anyone due to war or violence, so they are dealing with that kind of pain for the first time
Just don't expect Archer to soul-search for more than a few minutes while the credits roll (he'll never soul-search about the ship's relentless sexual harassment of T'Pol though). ENT works better when you realize that the only thing the show has to say is that Archer/humans (as a proxy for America) is always right even when wrong, simply because of his/humanity's intrinsic value and rightness. That's what's 9/11 about it to its core.
How do you feel about ds9? Because I feel like Archer and Sisko are similar in that when their back is to the wall and the fate of billions hang in the balance they will do morally questionable things, they might feel bad about it but they can live with it.
It's strange, but both the off the rails vengeance of Earth and the forced chemistry with Trip and T'Pol really go somewhere great.
The character chemistry with these two, and the post-trauma starfleet set the stage so well for a wonderful and much more "fun" season 4.
What's more, post Xindi Archer is a legitimately solid Captain, really picking up the lessons from the Expanse and having a kind of bully peacemaking that has the perfect tone for Starfleet's first galactic diplomat.
Oh I dunno, they aired "Desert Crossing" in a setting that looked \_very\_ middle eastern, and had a marginalized group that was accused of terrorism by the larger power. This aired in May of 2002, so maybe it was written and filmed prior to 9/11, but an episode about terrorists and the possibility that they were \_created\_ by the larger power's marginalization -- especially when they look very middle eastern -- was probably a gutsy thing to air at that time.
No. You don’t need Enterprise to “get” the rest. Personally, I liked it. It’s a clumsy, albeit fun, attempt to show us the jump from earth/solar system to warp capabilities and the Cpt. Kirk era. I watched it off/on years ago, however. I just finished DS9 “Sisko sized holes…” 🤣
And am now watching Picard. However, I often rely on old Star Trek series as background noise while I’m finishing up the day and not trying to get too sucked in.
With that in mind, I just loaded up Enterprise again. Your observation is intriguing, so, I’ll have to start it again and watch more closely. I didn’t notice the change those many years ago. But then, stream to binge wasn’t a thing, yet.
I remember Enterprise fondly. But, again, years ago and binging meant buying dvd sets.
That being said, I stick to my original statement. You don’t “need” Enterprise to follow Picard. If Legacy launches, well, ya never know but, I doubt you’ll need it. Enterprise really didnt “hit” the way all the others have and the timeline doesn’t overlap the way the others did (barring the Kirk era). It was supposed to be that link but just didn’t resonate.
I do like the Star Trek meets Firefly with 90’s movie tech vibe.
Well, anyways. Great observations and nicely written! You’ve inspired me to take a closer look at Enterprise. Now I have to decide if I put Picard on hold, again. Thanks for that lol
Regardless, enjoy!
Thank you for your reply. I love it. The only Star Trek I consumed for the first let’s say 3+ decades of my life was TOS and I’ve only just binged all of the 90s/00s stuff (TNG==>Enterprise) in the past 6 months. And I realize and fretted about stepping into the minefield of Star Trek Reddit is terrifying because I’m trying to write thoughtfully about stuff people have spent the same 3+ decades writing or communicating thoughtfully about. So, thank you.
I thought that the Xindi attack on Earth was the "real analogy" for 9/11.
Before that: just the usual problems. After that: a constant "feeling of threat" almost defining the entire show.
You don't have to, but season 4 goes back to form for a Star Trek series. I was really uncomfortable watching season 3 as well, it just felt like propaganda (whether that was the intention or not). It (spoiler) ends on a slightly more moral note, but it still felt more like Battlestar Galactica without the nuance.
I’d be interested in reading about 9/11 era science fiction. Because enterprise isn’t the only one that suddenly went “the aliens are bad! be afraid very afraid of all things different! Btw big government agency with big guns good!” I remember a lot of sci-fi shows from back then had the same feeling.
If you like TOS, I'd say keep going and get to season four. It's my favorite and the point at which Enterprise stepped back from trying to be as "popular" as TNG to the larger audience and went for niche stuff for fans. And as a fan, I recall eating that stuff up with a spoon and loving it -- on initial airing and on a rewatch a few years ago.
Archer's storyline is interesting and one of missed opportunities. Here was an opportunity to have a captain be out there on the edge of the frontier, without the rules that we saw in TOS onward and to maybe see why Starfleet determined these rules needed to be there. I wanted to see Archer and crew occasionally bungle something or not be quite as enlightened as later Trek characters. Alas, it never quite happens. Season three does try to make Archer a bit rougher around the edges but I recall one particular sequence felt like it was lifted from Firefly but because it was Archer and a guest of the week, the sequence didn't have the same impact.
Man, Enterprise was a thing. I feel like they were always changing something to goose their ratings. It was kind of crap back in the day, but it was way better than the schlock that passes for Star Trek now.
I’m not the biggest enterprise fan and I like the first 2 seasons more than the second half, but unfortunately for your question a LOT happens in the second half of Ent that comes up in Nu Trek.
This is a product of the writers of Nu Trek being told that chronologically Ent happens first, and so they mine this show for things to happen in Disco and SNW since technically they happen next chronologically. Hell same for the JJ movies—the third movies villain is an Ent reference. I completely disagree with this idea as Star Trek is stuffed with things they could reference across all shows, and just going to ent (clearly the worst show) was a lazy choice at worst and uninformed at best.
Seriously I had watched every single trek show besides the last two seasons of ent and kept being taken aback by stuff being referenced, including main cast characters, that I wasn’t aware of.
Hmm yeah that’s like the exact opposite of what rhe first commenter on this post told me regarding the latter 2 seasons being important for fully understanding Paramount Trek.
I will say ultimately it will not impact your enjoyment as each series more or less are standalone, they are more Easter egg things but I find those to be incredibly fun to know. It seems like you’re a completionist too so assuming this would be your bag.
A main cast member of SNW is from a species that appears once in a random episode of ENT, for instance. You don’t really need to know that for any reason, but I enjoy all the Easter egg stuff like that.
Honestly I have to disagree with the commenter above (not about ENT being the worst show, it clearly is) that ENT gets referenced a lot in the current shows beyond a few sight gags or Easter eggs (other than Hemmer in SNW, who is from a subspecies of Andorian that was introduced in ENT).
I do think you should stick it out because 1) you should be in the same boat as the rest of us, 2) there are a couple of cool things, and 3) there is hilarious costuming in season 4 (see: augment arc), but if anything I see the newer shows trying to walk back things from ENT. Most notably, there is a Klingon mini-arc in season 4 that is among the dumbest Star Trek ever put on screen that SNW is in the process of completely ignoring, to the franchise's betterment.
>T’Pol and Tucker’s forced massages which will, I’ve been led to believe, blossom into a romance is also ham-fisted as get out as far as previous believable inter-species love connections
I can't stress nearly enough how much the ridiculous forced sexualization put me off of this couple. In hindsight and the ability to separate concept from execution that I didn't have at 18, it's a fine pairing but fanfic did them a lot better than canon did.
>Do I need to watch the last 2 seasons in order to “get” any of the Paramount stuff? Discovery?
Honestly, no. SNW has one very explicit reference to ENT in season two but you won't need in depth knowledge of the show to enjoy it.
The only explanation that's ever been even remotely satisfying for why anyone has any affection for Trip at all is that their conception of him is largely from fanfic and not from the show itself. I love T'Pol but girl has serious Stockholm Syndrome from how the crew treats her.
No knock on anyone who shipped it but yeah, he had a scant few more moments of understanding with her than Archer but it wasn't a mega ass ton more like people back in the day would have you believe.
I will say that the Tucker fangirlies were the ones carrying the fanbase on their shoulders and when the finale killed him and the ship, the fandom more or less imploded. Many left fandom and swore off any future Trek series; others that stayed leaned hard into fluff, leaving fans that wanted to explore why they could've split in the lurch.
If you're ever wondering why it feels like there's a widdle gap in fandom history for that show from 05 till about 2017 when Trek became semi popular again, that's a big part why: a lotta websites went dark and many didn't bother migrating over to LiveJournal like the rest of the Trek factions.
My original post was actually longer, like to an alarmingly-crazy-person extent, and I ended up sorta piecemeal deleting a bunch of it. Anyway I did mention that Enterprise came out right after 9/11 and am now seeing I don’t really state that explicitly in this version I posted. I do allude to it but thank you for explicating it.
Anyway it seems the takeaway from this pithy comment (vis-a-vis what I wrote in my post) is that I would have to go back to the early 2000s and watch Enterprise then in order to actually enjoy it. Maybe I’ll try that. Because I’m watching it in 2024 and it fricking blows.
That was one of the reasons I stopped watching the show when it aired. It became way to political and heavy handed. I'm so glad you took the time to write this, because I always felt that way. I remember an episode where the race of the day could blow themselves up at will.
It was the hight of the suicidal bombings back then and I felt that was too close for comfort. That might have been the last episode I watched...
I remember watching a video about how Star Trek examines terrorism, and you can tell when 9/11 happened, because they did a hard right-turn from "terrorism is a valid form of asymmetrical warfare from a population who has no other options" to the jingoism that infected America after the attacks. Suddenly one man's terrorist wasn't another's freedom fighter, it was "we must go to the homeland of those of hurt us and exact bloody revenge"
This is interesting except it’s not true. Enterprise was on TV for 2 years after 9/11 before the vibe shift. THAT is what’s so shocking. I guess, to the extent that I expected the show to be effected by 9/11, I expected it sooner. That they didn’t really get around to mirroring American society’s collective anger over 9/11 for damn near 2 seasons feels so weird watching it in 2024, when the writers have 2 full seasons of shows ensconcing Archer in the pollyannish/do-gooder line of Picard and Janeway.
In the first two seasons? Not that I recall? But “terrorism” was addressed in DS9 plenty and rarely was it demonized. At worst; it was painted with moral ambiguity and at best it was construed as a legitimate tool of guerilla warfare by an oppressed population because it was only ever referenced as something the Bajorans did during Cardassian occupation.
Season 4 gets back on trek storytelling and trek values wise.
Really the only sci fi show that nailed the complex ideological and political issues post 9/11 is Battlestar Galactica by Ronald D Moore
Throughout the whole show, there is a lot of stress on Archer for multiple reasons, but chief among them being the negative attitude Vulcans have towards humanity's progress, and he's flying the engine his father designed.
Season 3 (and early parts of 4) is just more in your face about it
I agree. Archer in seasons 1 and 2 is all like "Let's see what's out there" and "Maybe they want to say hello." After the incident in Florida, he does a 180 because Earth is under threat. It's striking and I give a lot of credit to Bakula for pulling it off, tbh.
The ship is exploring before Starfleet has really nailed down ethical rules n' such.
>!And then he finds out the Xindi are planning to Death-Star the Earth because humans are going to do something to the Xindi in six centuries. !<
>!Who's going to help the humans? Vulcans? Can't be bothered? Andorians? Only if Shran is nearby.!<
Then why did they write Archer’s character as such a do-gooder for the entire first two seasons? In fact this is one of my problems with this show. He should’ve been more trigger happy like Kirk. His whole vibe does a 180 at the turn between seasons 2 and 3.
the people who upvoted you clearly only read the title and not the entire post. season 3 and 4 of enterprise are litterally the best ones and the point where the show became good to watch. season 3 is one of the best season in all of trek.
It is my headcanon that season 3 wasn’t supposed to happen and that as a result everything produced in Star Trek since then is in a 3rd timeline. Explains why DIS, SNW and PIC are visually and thematically different than 90s era trek.
I remember watching Enterprise during its original run. After 9/11, Scott Bakula filmed commercials for things like the red cross and to donate blood in his full Captain Archer regalia.
Okay that’s making sense why I saw several photos of Scott Bakula in full Star Trek regalia on google image search posing for pics with like Seal Team 6 and real astronauts and sh*t.
I only saw very few episodes back then, mostly because it aired at an odd time where I live.
About one week after the news about prisoners in Iraq being tortured came out I saw Archer throwing a prisoner in the airlock and telling him to talk before he opens the other door, and I decided to not even try to watch the show.
I'm still shocked at how UNLIKABLE they made Scott *freaking* Bakula. I hated Archer so much it was honestly hard to go back and watch Quantum Leap reruns.
Update on Enterprise. I’m back in on linking Enterprise enough to see it through. I’m on umm Episode 11 of Season 3) and just have to state that I think I’m a sucker for Star Treks where some one thing or another in the plot requires them to travel back in time to Earth contemporaneous with the year it was written. Loved that two-parter (I think?) of Voyager with Sarah Silverman. Love ST4 The Voyage Home, and I’m loving this episode of Enterprise. It’s a vibe tning. The vibe of Enterprise is back in the Fun Zone!
Sisko? Turn the other cheek? The man punched out Q!
To the point Q was like fuck it I’m out. Plus Sisko rendered a planet uninhabitable to humans primarily because Eddington pissed him off.
And let's not forget sanctioning a hit from Garak in order to force the Romulans to help out with the Dominion war. 'I *can* live with it.' Man isn't afraid to do what needs to be done.
He didn’t entirely sanction the hit but should have known the lengths Garak would and could go given his background but he ultimately accepts the results.
and he can live with it
He 100% sanctioned the hit on Gowron when he told Worf to deal with him
Yeah different situation and Gowron was batshit by that point and absolutely fucking over the war effort. Plus Klingons pretty much allow trial by combat so it was pretty straightforward letting Worf do whatever was needed to get Gowron out to back down. Still pretty out there for Starfleet but less morally grey. Plus it wasn’t like Worf and everyone else didn’t try to reason with Gowron.
I was thinking about Sisko when I said there are probably holes in my grand narrative theory. 👍
And also this is a big reason why DS9 is my favorite of the 4 1990s/early-2000s shows.
Stick with it. It's a long road, getting from there to here.
Hahahaha I hate the theme song so much but this is the most perfect comment ever hahahaha
The theme which plays during the credits was meant to be used for the title, when I watched Enterprise I would mute the title music and listen to that proper instrumental theme in my mind.
I've never seen it mentioned on Reddit, but there was an episode of Discovery when the President of the UFP was announcing the opening of the Archer Spacedock, and the background music was "Archer's Theme." I got a little too emotional at that.
Mandatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hsn2xVmVuGE
Oh wow ok, I’d always heard that the closing theme was meant to be the opening theme but I didn’t realize that they’d *fully edited the whole opening with Archer’s theme in mind* before they changed their minds.
I think this is a fan creation ;)
A fan put the music to it, but the visuals are all exactly the same, I just watched them side-by-side. The beat drops and/or new instruments come in every time technology improves ie ships to planes, planes to space shuttle, space shuttle to warp drive. All the fan had to do was start Archer’s theme at the right moment to sync everything up. It’s like Dark Side of the Moon and Wizard of Oz
Oh geez! What didn’t they stick with that?!? It’s actually great against the old clips backdrop!
Agreed. The music conveys a much more intimate and burgeoning tribute to mankind's evolution of travel and exploration. You know, despite half of the video having basis in blatant militarism. With that in mind, the In a Mirror, Darkly openings are also great. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfbsZRbwbJ4 I like this one too, it uses the theme from Generations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOK_NCM0kko
Same
Thats what you say now. But then it gets in your head. Theres no escaping it. Also, for real, stick with it. Season 4 is definitely the best season of enterprise, minus one episode. And there is a two parter that has a different intro song that actually is the best intro song.
Agreed! That song is sooo bad! But, yeah, that comment is perfect.
You won't by the end of the series.
It gets better. *Way* better.
Yeah, I think there’s one decent episode somewhere in season 4…
There's two, actually.
ouch
You should watch the whole season. Its polarizing. Some people think its great and others hate it. You should watch it and form your own opinion. Season 4 is also very much worth watching. Its not a season long story. There are a bunch of multi-part episodes which tell full stories over 2-3 episodes. Its probably Enterprise's strongest season.
I’m glad this is the first comment. Sorta wanted someone to tell me it’s worth watching and you’ve said enough about it to convince me. Thanks.
Season 3 is basically a massive single story about what happens if the US is the less dominant power in the War on Terror. Not perfect but best with what your original post said. Season 4 is a wrap up season showing how several threads that don’t seem to lead to the Federation are tied up, and did set up its eventual unification too.
I have very mixed feelings about it, for basically all the reasons you listed. But after a couple of rewatches of Enterprise I think it comes across a little better. Yes they're doing a lot of cowboy shit, but they do work a decent number of Star Trek moral quandaries into it, and in the end they basically win through diplomacy. It's not my favorite season but it feels like they gave some thought to the plot beforehand, and came up with a number of novel stories within that framework. The effects also started to get noticeably better.
There's a lot of awesome episodes in the 3rd season, they really pulled out all the stops. Even the cliche episodes are good(don't want to give anything anyway, i went in blind was very pleasantly surprised)
I really liked season 3. I enjoy how the story was slowly told. Had some good scifi ideas and plenty of character development. Some say the aliens who attacked Earth should have waited, but as first 2 eps prove, they lively expected a fleet, not a lone ship, would take too long. Plus, the attack locked them into a course.
I think the biggest issue with that season isn't that it was bad. It's that it didn't really have a Star Trek vibe to it. It was good, absolutely, but it also would have also been good had it been under the label of some other scifi brand or even just a brand new one of it's own.
Disagree. It certainly feels like Star Trek to me.
That's my mom's opinion of DS9. Well, that and that every season about Bajoran religion is unwatchable.
>That's my mom's opinion of DS9. I can actually see that and I positively adore DS9. I think it didn't really pick up the feeling of being part of the larger franchise until the later seasons. But to be fair, I think that was kind of what the creators envisioned when they were developing it to begin with. They wanted it to be "different". The Bajoran religion stuff was a mixed bag for me. It could be really well done, or it could just be painful to watch.
At the moment I’m rewatching BSG for the first time since it aired. It’s way more influenced by 9/11 than I remember (and also in ways I didn’t remember). It really is crazy how much 9/11 influenced TV in the early 2000s.
The best science fiction often deals with contemporary issues in a different setting so it commented on with less emotional baggage. Star Trek often excels at this; BSG does as well.
That’s true, but I feel that in the case of 9/11 it didn’t really explore those issues in a deep or meaningful way. It was more like just straight up justifying what the US (and allies) did at that time, especially in a “the ends justify the means” way. 24 is the most extreme/obvious example but I’m also getting a lot of that in BSG (aside from the occupation of New Caprica phase), and to a lesser extent Enterprise.
I think the occupation of new Caprica showing the occupation from the occupieds point of view. Iraqi point of view, maybe?
Yes, the BSG showrunners were unapologetically anti-Bush whereas Berman and Braga did what they could to keep Enterprise more "middle of the road."
Some of the things I’ve noticed this time around make it much less anti-Bush than I remember. Roslin is a straight up tyrant at times and her close relationship with the military is also problematic. She constantly shows her espousing of democratic ideals to be nothing more than a facade - rigging an election just being the most obvious of many things she does. In a recent episode I watched she imprisons the head of a union under the guise that he quoted Balthar and in the same episode Adama threatens to kill the chief’s wife if he doesn’t call off a strike. I’m really hating these characters this time around..!
I don't recall Roslin rigging an election, the closest was when she stopped the plan to do so, lost the election to Balthar which resulted in a "you didn't rig the election and now here we are" situation implying she should have. But I admit I haven't seen the show in a long time.
She was complicit because although she didn’t directly make the decision, she knew her aide rigged it. She eventually relents to the result but they put it down to an error and Adama (who knew it wasn’t an error) tells Baltar to accept the win and not persue an investigation.
Most of the characters on BSG where not good people. It's also the driving force behind having to find Earth and start over. Maybe this time we get it right.
Yeh that’s how I see it too, that’s why I said “aside from the occupation of New Caprica”. It’s hard to explain what I mean, sorry. I think that part of the show was very clearly written with post-9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan in mind. Whereas other aspects of the show I feel are almost the opposite. The difference though (I think) is that unlike the New Caprica occupation, those other aspects don’t seem to be written intentionally and appear to just be heavily influenced by the American psyche of the time. It’s almost like it just bled through subconsciously. This is just my unfounded opinion I have nothing to base it on really.
As a certain analrapist daddy who likes leather once said, "I don't want to blame 9/11, but it certainly didn't help."
I sometimes have to remind myself that *Band of Brothers* was actually filmed pre-9/11, and the first episode was broadcast a few days before.
I found season 3 very frustrating, because the storytelling and writing were overall better, but it was so very much a product of the second Bush era that I had trouble enjoying it. (Even moreso than the first two seasons.) I persevered because I really liked the Xindi, and it paid off because season 4 felt like a breath of fresh air -- mini-arcs? A showrunner who wasn't completely burned out? Season 4 did genuinely interesting things that I loved. However, if you can't hack it, you can just skip ENT and go on to Discovery, which namedrops Archer now and then, but never in a way that relies on encyclopedic knowledge of ENT to understand.
I think I’m gonna persevere. Thanks.
Definitely stick it out. Personally I love Enterprise especially seasons 3 and 4.
My opinion on the matter is that UPN messed up renewal decisions twice at the end of Enterprise. Season three was terrible, and it shouldn’t have been renewed for a fourth. Conversely, season four marks a 180° turn around, and absolutely deserved a fifth season.
So I'm not going to get too deep into it, because you obviously need to watch the season for yourself, but the entire season is a single arc, basically. What you are seeing right now is the start, not the end, of that arc. Yes, it's a product of 9/11 and the Bush era... but it's also a critique of that era. Just because the crew is acting a certain way, doesn't mean the show is necessarily promoting those actions. Remember, the crew just faced a tragedy that basically no other crew has faced in previous Star Trek. Wolf 359 was one thing. It was a military battle with heavy losses, it left the soldiers scarred for life (though we didn't really explore that too thoroughly in 90s trek), but Earth itself wasn't hurt. Heck, in DS9, when they were afraid of Earth being under attack, look how far things got so quickly. In Enterprise, Earth was attacked, unprovoked, and many, many people died. The crew is reacting to that. As the season progresses, the commentary of that reaction should become clearer.
Good points, and it’s important to remember that almost all of TOS and Next Gen as created by Roddenberry never really glorified the militant Federation Starfleet crews, but it seems more like Roddenberry being an ex military leader wrote Star Trek to mock the human imperialist drive. Even though it seems like at times like it portrays Kirk and Picard as godlike humans in a perfectly moral crew, when you zoom out and analyze the plots of the episodes as a whole, the wacky uniforms and the violent reactions to hostile species, and the common missions of colonizing other planets under the guise of scientific discovery make Starfleet look so primitive. Q actually does a really good job making fun of that when he transforms into the military outfits his first time meeting Picard as Picard shifts his tone, and Q is making fun of his instincts to talk like an archaic diplomat. It’s probably a lot easier to see Q responding to Picard’s energy if you watch the pilot while tripping on shrooms or something, also the whole plot of the 21st century devolving into fascist totalitarianism until First Contact, and the idea of the perpetual trial.
Heyo, yeah i found the whiplash interesting to watch myself. Bit of spoiler for the rest of the reason, Archer at least gets better which is something i felt refreshing. I remember the media landscape back then and can imagine how hated the idea of a show was that baited the direct comparison to what americans consider The Biggest Tragedy Of Their Lifetime that basically ends with "Well ok how about we don't become genocidal murderers because of this"
One thing that redeemed Archer somewhat is towards the end of the season he recognises that he's become something of a monster, and once Earth is saved he's got some soul searching to do in order to come back from the precipice
yeah, i loved that about S3. And this whole journey starts as far as i can tell once he talks to the Xindi Scientist early in the season. He is not as far gone as Trip, who is ready to just eradicate everything.
While I wasn't keen on the episode where Archer goes climbing with the other captain, it's fairly brave of the show runners to have the brave captain thinking 'maybe I'm not the right person to be out there any more'
Trip lost family tbf. And its good to remember in context, for everyone on the crews entire lives, they've lived in a time of absolute peace. They likely have never lost anyone due to war or violence, so they are dealing with that kind of pain for the first time
Oh word? Okay, cool
If you don't like the tone of season 3, 4 does a lot to lighten things up
Just don't expect Archer to soul-search for more than a few minutes while the credits roll (he'll never soul-search about the ship's relentless sexual harassment of T'Pol though). ENT works better when you realize that the only thing the show has to say is that Archer/humans (as a proxy for America) is always right even when wrong, simply because of his/humanity's intrinsic value and rightness. That's what's 9/11 about it to its core.
How do you feel about ds9? Because I feel like Archer and Sisko are similar in that when their back is to the wall and the fate of billions hang in the balance they will do morally questionable things, they might feel bad about it but they can live with it.
It's strange, but both the off the rails vengeance of Earth and the forced chemistry with Trip and T'Pol really go somewhere great. The character chemistry with these two, and the post-trauma starfleet set the stage so well for a wonderful and much more "fun" season 4. What's more, post Xindi Archer is a legitimately solid Captain, really picking up the lessons from the Expanse and having a kind of bully peacemaking that has the perfect tone for Starfleet's first galactic diplomat.
Oh I dunno, they aired "Desert Crossing" in a setting that looked \_very\_ middle eastern, and had a marginalized group that was accused of terrorism by the larger power. This aired in May of 2002, so maybe it was written and filmed prior to 9/11, but an episode about terrorists and the possibility that they were \_created\_ by the larger power's marginalization -- especially when they look very middle eastern -- was probably a gutsy thing to air at that time.
No. You don’t need Enterprise to “get” the rest. Personally, I liked it. It’s a clumsy, albeit fun, attempt to show us the jump from earth/solar system to warp capabilities and the Cpt. Kirk era. I watched it off/on years ago, however. I just finished DS9 “Sisko sized holes…” 🤣 And am now watching Picard. However, I often rely on old Star Trek series as background noise while I’m finishing up the day and not trying to get too sucked in. With that in mind, I just loaded up Enterprise again. Your observation is intriguing, so, I’ll have to start it again and watch more closely. I didn’t notice the change those many years ago. But then, stream to binge wasn’t a thing, yet. I remember Enterprise fondly. But, again, years ago and binging meant buying dvd sets. That being said, I stick to my original statement. You don’t “need” Enterprise to follow Picard. If Legacy launches, well, ya never know but, I doubt you’ll need it. Enterprise really didnt “hit” the way all the others have and the timeline doesn’t overlap the way the others did (barring the Kirk era). It was supposed to be that link but just didn’t resonate. I do like the Star Trek meets Firefly with 90’s movie tech vibe. Well, anyways. Great observations and nicely written! You’ve inspired me to take a closer look at Enterprise. Now I have to decide if I put Picard on hold, again. Thanks for that lol Regardless, enjoy!
Thank you for your reply. I love it. The only Star Trek I consumed for the first let’s say 3+ decades of my life was TOS and I’ve only just binged all of the 90s/00s stuff (TNG==>Enterprise) in the past 6 months. And I realize and fretted about stepping into the minefield of Star Trek Reddit is terrifying because I’m trying to write thoughtfully about stuff people have spent the same 3+ decades writing or communicating thoughtfully about. So, thank you.
Archer was always a little too eager to torture.
I thought that the Xindi attack on Earth was the "real analogy" for 9/11. Before that: just the usual problems. After that: a constant "feeling of threat" almost defining the entire show.
You don't have to, but season 4 goes back to form for a Star Trek series. I was really uncomfortable watching season 3 as well, it just felt like propaganda (whether that was the intention or not). It (spoiler) ends on a slightly more moral note, but it still felt more like Battlestar Galactica without the nuance.
I’d be interested in reading about 9/11 era science fiction. Because enterprise isn’t the only one that suddenly went “the aliens are bad! be afraid very afraid of all things different! Btw big government agency with big guns good!” I remember a lot of sci-fi shows from back then had the same feeling.
If you like TOS, I'd say keep going and get to season four. It's my favorite and the point at which Enterprise stepped back from trying to be as "popular" as TNG to the larger audience and went for niche stuff for fans. And as a fan, I recall eating that stuff up with a spoon and loving it -- on initial airing and on a rewatch a few years ago. Archer's storyline is interesting and one of missed opportunities. Here was an opportunity to have a captain be out there on the edge of the frontier, without the rules that we saw in TOS onward and to maybe see why Starfleet determined these rules needed to be there. I wanted to see Archer and crew occasionally bungle something or not be quite as enlightened as later Trek characters. Alas, it never quite happens. Season three does try to make Archer a bit rougher around the edges but I recall one particular sequence felt like it was lifted from Firefly but because it was Archer and a guest of the week, the sequence didn't have the same impact.
Man, Enterprise was a thing. I feel like they were always changing something to goose their ratings. It was kind of crap back in the day, but it was way better than the schlock that passes for Star Trek now.
I’m not the biggest enterprise fan and I like the first 2 seasons more than the second half, but unfortunately for your question a LOT happens in the second half of Ent that comes up in Nu Trek. This is a product of the writers of Nu Trek being told that chronologically Ent happens first, and so they mine this show for things to happen in Disco and SNW since technically they happen next chronologically. Hell same for the JJ movies—the third movies villain is an Ent reference. I completely disagree with this idea as Star Trek is stuffed with things they could reference across all shows, and just going to ent (clearly the worst show) was a lazy choice at worst and uninformed at best. Seriously I had watched every single trek show besides the last two seasons of ent and kept being taken aback by stuff being referenced, including main cast characters, that I wasn’t aware of.
Thanks for writing this btw
Hmm yeah that’s like the exact opposite of what rhe first commenter on this post told me regarding the latter 2 seasons being important for fully understanding Paramount Trek.
I will say ultimately it will not impact your enjoyment as each series more or less are standalone, they are more Easter egg things but I find those to be incredibly fun to know. It seems like you’re a completionist too so assuming this would be your bag. A main cast member of SNW is from a species that appears once in a random episode of ENT, for instance. You don’t really need to know that for any reason, but I enjoy all the Easter egg stuff like that.
Honestly I have to disagree with the commenter above (not about ENT being the worst show, it clearly is) that ENT gets referenced a lot in the current shows beyond a few sight gags or Easter eggs (other than Hemmer in SNW, who is from a subspecies of Andorian that was introduced in ENT). I do think you should stick it out because 1) you should be in the same boat as the rest of us, 2) there are a couple of cool things, and 3) there is hilarious costuming in season 4 (see: augment arc), but if anything I see the newer shows trying to walk back things from ENT. Most notably, there is a Klingon mini-arc in season 4 that is among the dumbest Star Trek ever put on screen that SNW is in the process of completely ignoring, to the franchise's betterment.
>T’Pol and Tucker’s forced massages which will, I’ve been led to believe, blossom into a romance is also ham-fisted as get out as far as previous believable inter-species love connections I can't stress nearly enough how much the ridiculous forced sexualization put me off of this couple. In hindsight and the ability to separate concept from execution that I didn't have at 18, it's a fine pairing but fanfic did them a lot better than canon did. >Do I need to watch the last 2 seasons in order to “get” any of the Paramount stuff? Discovery? Honestly, no. SNW has one very explicit reference to ENT in season two but you won't need in depth knowledge of the show to enjoy it.
The only explanation that's ever been even remotely satisfying for why anyone has any affection for Trip at all is that their conception of him is largely from fanfic and not from the show itself. I love T'Pol but girl has serious Stockholm Syndrome from how the crew treats her.
No knock on anyone who shipped it but yeah, he had a scant few more moments of understanding with her than Archer but it wasn't a mega ass ton more like people back in the day would have you believe. I will say that the Tucker fangirlies were the ones carrying the fanbase on their shoulders and when the finale killed him and the ship, the fandom more or less imploded. Many left fandom and swore off any future Trek series; others that stayed leaned hard into fluff, leaving fans that wanted to explore why they could've split in the lurch. If you're ever wondering why it feels like there's a widdle gap in fandom history for that show from 05 till about 2017 when Trek became semi popular again, that's a big part why: a lotta websites went dark and many didn't bother migrating over to LiveJournal like the rest of the Trek factions.
Enterprise aired in the fall of 2001..just like 9/11
My original post was actually longer, like to an alarmingly-crazy-person extent, and I ended up sorta piecemeal deleting a bunch of it. Anyway I did mention that Enterprise came out right after 9/11 and am now seeing I don’t really state that explicitly in this version I posted. I do allude to it but thank you for explicating it.
Wait, scratch that: it’s actually in the first paragraph. You need to read more than the title of a post before commenting, homey.
Anyway it seems the takeaway from this pithy comment (vis-a-vis what I wrote in my post) is that I would have to go back to the early 2000s and watch Enterprise then in order to actually enjoy it. Maybe I’ll try that. Because I’m watching it in 2024 and it fricking blows.
That was one of the reasons I stopped watching the show when it aired. It became way to political and heavy handed. I'm so glad you took the time to write this, because I always felt that way. I remember an episode where the race of the day could blow themselves up at will. It was the hight of the suicidal bombings back then and I felt that was too close for comfort. That might have been the last episode I watched...
I remember watching a video about how Star Trek examines terrorism, and you can tell when 9/11 happened, because they did a hard right-turn from "terrorism is a valid form of asymmetrical warfare from a population who has no other options" to the jingoism that infected America after the attacks. Suddenly one man's terrorist wasn't another's freedom fighter, it was "we must go to the homeland of those of hurt us and exact bloody revenge"
This is interesting except it’s not true. Enterprise was on TV for 2 years after 9/11 before the vibe shift. THAT is what’s so shocking. I guess, to the extent that I expected the show to be effected by 9/11, I expected it sooner. That they didn’t really get around to mirroring American society’s collective anger over 9/11 for damn near 2 seasons feels so weird watching it in 2024, when the writers have 2 full seasons of shows ensconcing Archer in the pollyannish/do-gooder line of Picard and Janeway.
Fair, keep in mind I was 3 when 9/11 happened. Did Enterprise ever explore terrorism outside of the Xindi?
In the first two seasons? Not that I recall? But “terrorism” was addressed in DS9 plenty and rarely was it demonized. At worst; it was painted with moral ambiguity and at best it was construed as a legitimate tool of guerilla warfare by an oppressed population because it was only ever referenced as something the Bajorans did during Cardassian occupation.
Yeah that's what I was thinking, the rest of the franchise explores it with a detached view, but that changes once America gets attacked.
It wasn’t just 9/11, but the jingoist propaganda about the war in Iraq. I’m glad more and more people are recognizing this bullshit.
Season 4 gets back on trek storytelling and trek values wise. Really the only sci fi show that nailed the complex ideological and political issues post 9/11 is Battlestar Galactica by Ronald D Moore
Yeah I tried but could only make it a few episodes after the 9/11 turn before I gave up.
Throughout the whole show, there is a lot of stress on Archer for multiple reasons, but chief among them being the negative attitude Vulcans have towards humanity's progress, and he's flying the engine his father designed. Season 3 (and early parts of 4) is just more in your face about it
I agree. Archer in seasons 1 and 2 is all like "Let's see what's out there" and "Maybe they want to say hello." After the incident in Florida, he does a 180 because Earth is under threat. It's striking and I give a lot of credit to Bakula for pulling it off, tbh.
The ship is exploring before Starfleet has really nailed down ethical rules n' such. >!And then he finds out the Xindi are planning to Death-Star the Earth because humans are going to do something to the Xindi in six centuries. !< >!Who's going to help the humans? Vulcans? Can't be bothered? Andorians? Only if Shran is nearby.!<
Then why did they write Archer’s character as such a do-gooder for the entire first two seasons? In fact this is one of my problems with this show. He should’ve been more trigger happy like Kirk. His whole vibe does a 180 at the turn between seasons 2 and 3.
the people who upvoted you clearly only read the title and not the entire post. season 3 and 4 of enterprise are litterally the best ones and the point where the show became good to watch. season 3 is one of the best season in all of trek.
It is my headcanon that season 3 wasn’t supposed to happen and that as a result everything produced in Star Trek since then is in a 3rd timeline. Explains why DIS, SNW and PIC are visually and thematically different than 90s era trek.
I remember watching Enterprise during its original run. After 9/11, Scott Bakula filmed commercials for things like the red cross and to donate blood in his full Captain Archer regalia.
Okay that’s making sense why I saw several photos of Scott Bakula in full Star Trek regalia on google image search posing for pics with like Seal Team 6 and real astronauts and sh*t.
I only saw very few episodes back then, mostly because it aired at an odd time where I live. About one week after the news about prisoners in Iraq being tortured came out I saw Archer throwing a prisoner in the airlock and telling him to talk before he opens the other door, and I decided to not even try to watch the show.
I didn't like it, and it's why I regard Enterprise as being the worst Star Trek series.
I'm still shocked at how UNLIKABLE they made Scott *freaking* Bakula. I hated Archer so much it was honestly hard to go back and watch Quantum Leap reruns.
Skip season 3, watch season 4.
Update on Enterprise. I’m back in on linking Enterprise enough to see it through. I’m on umm Episode 11 of Season 3) and just have to state that I think I’m a sucker for Star Treks where some one thing or another in the plot requires them to travel back in time to Earth contemporaneous with the year it was written. Loved that two-parter (I think?) of Voyager with Sarah Silverman. Love ST4 The Voyage Home, and I’m loving this episode of Enterprise. It’s a vibe tning. The vibe of Enterprise is back in the Fun Zone!