There are minor spoilers incorporated in this review
The Star Trek franchise was about 35 years old when Enterprise first came in 2001.
After The Original and Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space 9 and Voyager, Star Trek: Enterprise is the sixth series to come from it and in its first years of employment, it has raised tremendous doubts about the genre. People went as far as saying that Star Trek has virtually died and took Enterprise in general as the cause of its death.
It is hard to evaluate an entire series and like every Star Trek series up to date, it has its great strengths and its nauseating flaws. Due to many fans striking back at Enterprise with the older series in the back of their mind, I have seen them almost establish an actual doctrine on what is good and what is not. When it comes to it, Enterprise is not very respected. According to many, the CG effects are the stars of the show, the acting is revolting, the beautiful ships are the center of the show where the characters and their development is a stain on the background instead of the other way around and automatically the plots are regarded as flawed, loose and incomplete.
The first Season started out revealing bits and pieces of a three season arc called the 'Temporal Cold War'. How much I loathe the recurrent use of time travel, I can understand there are people that do like it. The visuals are mostly stunning and the acting is not quite as bad as the older Trek fans had hoped. Also many of the Guest Appearances are very enjoyable. My most favorite character is Andorian Commander Shran, played by Jeffrey Combs in I believe about 10 episodes.
I have seen the entire series from Broken Bow to the rather appalling 'What you leave behind', which is the end episode (Season 4, number 22) of the series and I will point out some things here, the pros and cons of the series.
Each series has its good and bad episodes, a constant that is most well known in series in which episodes are often independent of one another. There are some horrible episodes in Enterprise...
'A night in Sickbay' from Season 2 is appalling, figuring a scene where two women, a man and a dog are rubbing in cleansing soap onto one another. There is an episode called 'Terra Nova' in Season 1 with constant bad camera angles and intensely boring storytelling with no viable emotional baggage. 'Marauders', the episode that follows 'A night in sickbay' is also extremely annoying, as it portrays trained Klingon Warriors as pansies unable to outwit and overpower a handful of moisture farmers with a bunch of phase pistols, which would be like like Owen Lars in Star Wars, laying down suppressant fire and killing of a regiment of Imperial Stormtroopers.
Also from Season two, 'Vanishing Point' and 'Precious Cargo', yet again two episodes from Season 2 that follow one another, are plagued by bad acting and extremely dumb plots. Speaking about dumb plots; 'Rogue planet' from Season 1 tries to evolve Archer's character by incorporating a spiritual being that takes the shape of one of Archer's old fantasies. Or something. And then there is the worst episode of all; 'Bound' from Season 4, figuring the Enterprise Crew falling to the pheromones of 3 Orion females. This is kind of a reflection of the episode itself falling to the worst amounts of misguided continuity in the history of Star Trek.
However, while there are a few episodes in the Star Trek history worse than 'Bound' (Voyager Season 2, Episode 12: 'Threshold' is to my belief the worst episode within all Star Trek), there are none, in my opinion, Better than two of the BEST episodes from Enterprise; Cogenitor from Season 2 and Dear Doctor from Season 1, two scientifically flawless and emotionally most compelling stories. When one however looks deeper into Enterprise entire, one sees that with episodes like 'Dead Stop' (S2E4), 'Twilight' (S3E8), 'Shockwave' part 1 (S1E26) and the marvellous 'Countdown' (S3E23) and 'Stratagem' (S3E14), the series could have been saved if critics had looked closer.
The cancellation of the series had been an impulse decision going out from season 2's failure to be coherent, but many do not realize that Voyager's Season 2, which was a lot worse, almost had been the reason for its early decommission as well. Voyager's season 3 saved it, why couldn't Enterprise's Season 3 save its series as well? Maybe a second close brush was simply too much for the producers. However it is rather heavy on the heart to see the fact that after the series had officially been cancelled, Enterprise suddenly started to reflourish. Season 4 contains multiple 3 story arcs, most of which (in exclusion of the horrible 'Storm Front' cliffhanger) were extremely great. Brent Spiner's cameo as Arik Soong, the episode featuring the Syrrannites, the first really great story arc introducing us to Romulan subterfuge, the 2 Terra Prime episodes and the very entertaining 'In a mirror, Darkly' episodes where we see the first glances of the Mirror Universe's Terran Empire.
Where a lot of people would probably call me names for saying this, I do have the obligation to state that Enterprise is right there with DS9, and surpassed Voyager even though only 4 seasons containing a total of 98 episodes were made. I had loved to have seen more and if the consistent greatness of most of Season 4 had come earlier, there would be a season 5, 6 and 7.
The Star Trek franchise was about 35 years old when Enterprise first came in 2001.
After The Original and Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space 9 and Voyager, Star Trek: Enterprise is the sixth series to come from it and in its first years of employment, it has raised tremendous doubts about the genre. People went as far as saying that Star Trek has virtually died and took Enterprise in general as the cause of its death.
It is hard to evaluate an entire series and like every Star Trek series up to date, it has its great strengths and its nauseating flaws. Due to many fans striking back at Enterprise with the older series in the back of their mind, I have seen them almost establish an actual doctrine on what is good and what is not. When it comes to it, Enterprise is not very respected. According to many, the CG effects are the stars of the show, the acting is revolting, the beautiful ships are the center of the show where the characters and their development is a stain on the background instead of the other way around and automatically the plots are regarded as flawed, loose and incomplete.
The first Season started out revealing bits and pieces of a three season arc called the 'Temporal Cold War'. How much I loathe the recurrent use of time travel, I can understand there are people that do like it. The visuals are mostly stunning and the acting is not quite as bad as the older Trek fans had hoped. Also many of the Guest Appearances are very enjoyable. My most favorite character is Andorian Commander Shran, played by Jeffrey Combs in I believe about 10 episodes.
I have seen the entire series from Broken Bow to the rather appalling 'What you leave behind', which is the end episode (Season 4, number 22) of the series and I will point out some things here, the pros and cons of the series.
Each series has its good and bad episodes, a constant that is most well known in series in which episodes are often independent of one another. There are some horrible episodes in Enterprise...
'A night in Sickbay' from Season 2 is appalling, figuring a scene where two women, a man and a dog are rubbing in cleansing soap onto one another. There is an episode called 'Terra Nova' in Season 1 with constant bad camera angles and intensely boring storytelling with no viable emotional baggage. 'Marauders', the episode that follows 'A night in sickbay' is also extremely annoying, as it portrays trained Klingon Warriors as pansies unable to outwit and overpower a handful of moisture farmers with a bunch of phase pistols, which would be like like Owen Lars in Star Wars, laying down suppressant fire and killing of a regiment of Imperial Stormtroopers.
Also from Season two, 'Vanishing Point' and 'Precious Cargo', yet again two episodes from Season 2 that follow one another, are plagued by bad acting and extremely dumb plots. Speaking about dumb plots; 'Rogue planet' from Season 1 tries to evolve Archer's character by incorporating a spiritual being that takes the shape of one of Archer's old fantasies. Or something. And then there is the worst episode of all; 'Bound' from Season 4, figuring the Enterprise Crew falling to the pheromones of 3 Orion females. This is kind of a reflection of the episode itself falling to the worst amounts of misguided continuity in the history of Star Trek.
However, while there are a few episodes in the Star Trek history worse than 'Bound' (Voyager Season 2, Episode 12: 'Threshold' is to my belief the worst episode within all Star Trek), there are none, in my opinion, Better than two of the BEST episodes from Enterprise; Cogenitor from Season 2 and Dear Doctor from Season 1, two scientifically flawless and emotionally most compelling stories. When one however looks deeper into Enterprise entire, one sees that with episodes like 'Dead Stop' (S2E4), 'Twilight' (S3E8), 'Shockwave' part 1 (S1E26) and the marvellous 'Countdown' (S3E23) and 'Stratagem' (S3E14), the series could have been saved if critics had looked closer.
The cancellation of the series had been an impulse decision going out from season 2's failure to be coherent, but many do not realize that Voyager's Season 2, which was a lot worse, almost had been the reason for its early decommission as well. Voyager's season 3 saved it, why couldn't Enterprise's Season 3 save its series as well? Maybe a second close brush was simply too much for the producers. However it is rather heavy on the heart to see the fact that after the series had officially been cancelled, Enterprise suddenly started to reflourish. Season 4 contains multiple 3 story arcs, most of which (in exclusion of the horrible 'Storm Front' cliffhanger) were extremely great. Brent Spiner's cameo as Arik Soong, the episode featuring the Syrrannites, the first really great story arc introducing us to Romulan subterfuge, the 2 Terra Prime episodes and the very entertaining 'In a mirror, Darkly' episodes where we see the first glances of the Mirror Universe's Terran Empire.
Where a lot of people would probably call me names for saying this, I do have the obligation to state that Enterprise is right there with DS9, and surpassed Voyager even though only 4 seasons containing a total of 98 episodes were made. I had loved to have seen more and if the consistent greatness of most of Season 4 had come earlier, there would be a season 5, 6 and 7.