I just finally finished watching all 98 episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise from beginning to end. It’s taken me a couple of months, but I wanted to have all the background information I would need for my Star Trek Adventures roleplaying campaign, which takes place between the end of the Original Series and the beginning of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. I started by watching the Original Series, then the animated series, and then Enterprise. My mission is finally over.
Now, don’t come at me with Discovery and Strange New Worlds. Those shows are fine, but let’s be honest. They’re reboots. Re-imaginations. Whatever you want to call them. They cannot possibly be canonical for the continuity in which Star Trek The Original Series exists. As far as I’m concerned, they’re another timeline like the Kelvin timeline from the movies and I’m okay with that. I wouldn’t even mind if they redid the Original Series episodes in their own style. Anyway, back to Enterprise.
The first two seasons, I thought, started out pretty strong. They went out there and explored. The humans had a sense of wonder that even their Vulcan science officer found attractive. T’Pol would be on the bridge explaining that a phenomenon had already been catalogued by Vulcan scientists who found it unremarkable, and the Enterprise crew would discover something new and amazing about it because they weren’t jaded. Occasionally, these closer examinations would reveal a mystery that had to be solved. Really good Star Trek, if you ask me. Technology developed, strategies and tactics evolved, and it felt pretty natural.
Where it got completely cringey, however, was in their exploitation of the actors’ bodies. The lame decontamination gel scenes simply weren’t necessary, with them rubbing decon gel over each other’s hard-to-reach spots while in their underwear. T’Pol’s skin tight outfits and revealing satin night garments, which we saw often, were, if you’ll excuse the expression, illogical. Was there precedent for this, with Deanna Troi and Seven of Nine on their respective shows? Of course. But it didn’t make it right.
At the end of season two, however, the Enterprise went completely off the rails. Clearly inspired by the events of 9/11, a new race called the Xindi attacked Earth with a weapon of mass destruction that killed seven million people in Florida, including Trip Tucker’s sister. They spent the entire next season seeking revenge and looking for a new weapon that the Xindi were going to use to annihilate Earth. Gone was the entire premise of Starfleet as explorers, and we watched Captain Archer become a ruthless commander, crossing many moral lines that he never would have in the first two seasons. I still remember when I stopped watching the show when it first aired, after the 19th episode of the season (“Damage”), when Archer ordered his crew to steal the warp coil from the Illyrians, stranding them three years from their home. I remember just thinking, who are these awful people? So, this time around, I finished the season, and was gratified to see them dealing with the aftermath of these decisions in season four, after a bizarre time-traveling World War II two-parter. I half expected Archer to wake up in the German camp, saying, “Oh boy.”
The fourth and final season, though, I have to say, was a slog. Even if the third season was filled with horrible behavior, at least they had a clear mission to accomplish. The fourth season felt like they were using leftover scripts from Star Trek The Next Generation. Enterprise was no longer exploring. They were ferrying people around, policing augments, the result of genetic engineering, running supposed transporter experiments, and just hanging around known space. It really wasn’t much Star Trek at all. It was totally TNG, which I suppose made that awful finale appropriate, with guest stars from that show.
I would have liked to have seen what they had in mind for a season five, but given the decline in quality of stories in season four, it seems like they were just running out of antimatter there at the end.
