Not really. For the same reason that Total Recall doesn't make sense, no matter how much people try to justify it, if it was all in Quaid's head:
How did he know about the parts he wasn't there for?
I like the TRIBBLE Vulcans. You should be able to argue with elves, and frankly Vulcans had previously come across as just too damn perfect in Trek series. I liked seeing them as antagonists.
That's fair enough. I can see what you mean. Archer missed many things, so he couldn't have known them.
TRIBBLE Vulcans weren't necessarily a totally bad thing, but it felt to me, like it went TOO far in that direction.
Well, sure. But you could make the same argument about pretty much any of the Trek series. Or any series at all, for that matter.
Also, I fail to see how "A Night in Sickbay" made Archer look good.
Fair enough. This is after all just a hypothesis, I'm not expecting it by any means to be perfect.
As for that episode, well, maybe not, BUT...think about the focus, Archer's dog. He basically spends an entire...well...night in sickbay bitchin and moaning about that alien species (whose name I can't be bothered to remember) merely because Porthos peed on their sacred fern or whatever.
This same alien species, who, if they would've had ANY contact with ANY other species, would probably be regarded as the most intolerant, overly-sensitive species anyone could meet. I mean, they got offended by people EATING in front of each other. I mean, that's nearly as bad and stupid as the Tak-Tak from Voyager who do all those movements and took offense to Janeway putting her hands on her hips.*
So, are they really that bad? Or was Archer merely exaggerating (or possibly outright lying, but I could see that being TOO far-fetched) so that any stupid moves he might have made were lessened?
*Though in fairness, Janeway doing that usually means she's gettin ready to start the killin, so I suppose that one is understandable.
I remain empathetic to the concerns of my community, but do me a favor and lay off the god damn name calling and petty remarks. It will get you nowhere.
I must admit, respect points to Trendy for laying down the law like that.
They're not "bad," they're different. Different social mores that seem ridiculous to a Western audience but make sense to them.
Take, say...crossing fingers. As in "I hope this works, fingers crossed." Y'know? Only in Vietnam, the Vietnamese think that crossed fingers look like lady parts. So flashing this at someone is the equivalent of calling them the C-word. Or, consider the thumbs-up.
What you think it means: "It's all good!" What it means in most Arabic countries: A thumbs up in any Middle Eastern country pretty much means, loosely translated, that you hope the person you're gesturing at has a very pleasant trip to the proctologist.
Underachieving mid-level officials who got to their positions by blatant nepotism and show a complete lack of any of the skills they claim to have (i.e. diplomacy skills, command skills, or general competence at anything) tend to daydream of greatness. As Archer's only difference from John Scalzi's minor character Lars Win-Getag is that Archer wasn't literally farted to death, I completely understand how you came to this conclusion.
I like the TRIBBLE Vulcans. You should be able to argue with elves, and frankly Vulcans had previously come across as just too damn perfect in Trek series. I liked seeing them as antagonists.
They are also canon if more trek fans would actually pay attention to their depiction in TOS and stopped assuming they were all like Spock.
I think characters in Star Trek don't get a lot of character development in the first couple of seasons. In TOS if you weren't Kirk, Spock or Bones then not much went into you. I think it's telling that a lot of the side characters first names were created in the books and then later adopted by the writers.
TNG probably did character development better than most but didn't realize they had to do it until season 3.
DS9 would be up their too. I ended up really liking the series. Every character was changed from their experiences.
Voyager...I wanted to like this series but there were just too many improbabilities. Would a starship captain just accept known terrorists into his/her crew. There should have been a lot more resistance to this with the crew and the Maquis. If I was doing it the whole first season would have been tension between Starfleet and Maquis. I think BSG did a better version of a crew all alone in space trying to find home. BSG seemed like anything could go wrong. Voyager made it seem as if they were mildly inconvenienced being in the Delta Quadrant.
Enterprise...I like the show for what it was trying to do...again if you weren't part of the holy trinity...Archer, T'pol and Trip...very little was written about you. Hoshi was extremely annoying to me. IMO Shran is the only bright spot and lead to me really liking the Andorians. I am saddened when I hear that had it gone another season Shran would have joined the crew.
Your pain runs deep.
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
What turned me off Enterprise wasn't necessarily the writing, and it wasn't the actors...
It was that TRIBBLE theme song they paid WAY too much for.
Someone redid the opening credits using the closing music, "Archer's Theme". IMO, it's about a 10,000% improvement. I'd pay actual cash money for a DVD set with this version of the opening.
"Archer's Theme" was originally going to be the opening music, in fact. But...I like "Faith of the Heart." It's different, much as Enterprise was supposed to be different. Hell, for its first two seasons it wasn't even Star Trek: Enterprise, it was just Enterprise...and I love it for that.
I think the best lesson to learn from JJ verse and Enterprise for any new Trek movie or series is that
You don't try to rewrite Canon
You go before it you go past it you go along with it period there is no valid reason to change it
You don't try to rewrite it...Which is stupid to attempt in the first place
Jellico....Engineer ground.....Da'val Romulan space Sci
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
There was no war with Kzin. In Trek, there is no Kzin; the kzinti are only in one episode of the cartoon, which means their existence is soft canon at best. (Properly the kzinti belong only in Niven's Known Space stories, and they were only in that cartoon because Larry can't write to deadline to save his life.) If the kzinti were in Trek, there would have been several wars, because kzinti never know when enough is enough.
They were edging toward the Romulan War, but were sunk by the ratings, a legacy bequeathed them by Rick Berman and his fascination with time travel (coupled with his complete lack of anything resembling research on time-travel concepts). Berman was the entire reason there was a Temporal Cold War, and he thought attributing TRIBBLE success to time-traveling alien lizards was cool. (Then again, he thought "These Are the Voyages" would be "a love letter to the fans", so maybe he was a little tone-deaf as regards good ideas.)
There was no war with Kzin. In Trek, there is no Kzin; the kzinti are only in one episode of the cartoon, which means their existence is soft canon at best.
Actually CBS upgraded TAS to hard canon status several years ago when they released the DVD collections. So, the Kzinti do indeed exist in the Star Trek universe. Furthermore, Kzin has always been labeled on Star Trek sector maps since the TOS movies on up through TNG, DS9, etc.
Also, if Enterprise was Archer bragging, I think he'd make himself look a bit more mature and competent rather than the whiny manchild he's depicted as.
There was no war with Kzin. In Trek, there is no Kzin; the kzinti are only in one episode of the cartoon, which means their existence is soft canon at best.
Truth. However, a planned Season 5 episode, entitled "Kilkenny Cats," was slated to include the Kzinti. Having said that, including the Kzinti would include some awkward legal questions as well as trying to figure out how "The Slaver Weapon" could possibly work in canon Trek; I find it likely that "Kilkenny Cats" would have involved re-tooling the Kzinti to work, including possibly changing their name (much as how STO basically did this, with the Ferasans essentially being the Kzinti). But fans would know that it's the Kzinti due to the rough rendering of the Kzinti starship design, which drew visual cues from Star Fleet Universe's take on Kzinti ships (notably the missile pods and three-nacelle design).
Actually CBS upgraded TAS to hard canon status several years ago when they released the DVD collections. So, the Kzinti do indeed exist in the Star Trek universe. Furthermore, Kzin has always been labeled on Star Trek sector maps since the TOS movies on up through TNG, DS9, etc.
Star Trek Star Charts, as close as we'll ever get to an official star chart, also included an interstellar nation called "The Patriarchy" that we've otherwise never heard of; it's an obvious reference to the Kzinti Patriarchy.
There was no war with Kzin. In Trek, there is no Kzin; the kzinti are only in one episode of the cartoon, which means their existence is soft canon at best. (Properly the kzinti belong only in Niven's Known Space stories, and they were only in that cartoon because Larry can't write to deadline to save his life.) If the kzinti were in Trek, there would have been several wars, because kzinti never know when enough is enough.
They were edging toward the Romulan War, but were sunk by the ratings, a legacy bequeathed them by Rick Berman and his fascination with time travel (coupled with his complete lack of anything resembling research on time-travel concepts). Berman was the entire reason there was a Temporal Cold War, and he thought attributing TRIBBLE success to time-traveling alien lizards was cool. (Then again, he thought "These Are the Voyages" would be "a love letter to the fans", so maybe he was a little tone-deaf as regards good ideas.)
While it looked like that in the cliffhanger, it was written off pretty well that the alien lizards had nothing to do with TRIBBLE Success, there was a key assassination that took place in russia, preventing the rise of communism and allowing the TRIBBLE's to focus their forces on the western front. The Alien-lizard things were actually on Earth before the temporal cold war went hot(which happened when they returned to the future) and didn't interfere in Earth history, but their situation changed when the temporal war started and Earth history was altered by a different faction.
As to the other post, even seasons 1 through 2 had plenty of "seed laying" episodes with establishing the andorian and vulcan backgrounds which came into play in season 4, and the enterprise getting its feet wet. Even Season 3 i found plenty good though the plot line maybe extended for too long in that regard.
Again though, you compare Enterprise to any other Trek and it was following the same course, except for voyager (which actually started off pretty well but then the character writing started flying off the rails when producers started leaving after season 3 or so). TNG had an abysmal start and would've been cancelled in todays market, DS9 had a very slow first 3 seasons of extreme episodic nature and almost no serial arcs, even the dominion war arc took a long while to get on its feet(though the build up was worth it in the end).
Though i would still argue Enterprise had plenty good about it through seasons 1-2, these were afterall the early seasons and in that context it did what it needed to do to lay the groundwork for what eventually became the excellent season 4 and what would've been the great seasons 5+.
I think any criticism of them for lack of "time Travel research" is laughable, given the plots in TOS and several of the movies. Time Travel in Trek is never handled realistically or well in any series or movie. Though arguably that can be said of nearly every Science Fiction.
Notably, I don't think that Rick Berman has done anything after Trek.
Brannon "Threshold" Braga did work on Terra Nova, though...which also showed a complete disrespect for science and the IQs of the viewers.
I think that's being kind of generalized and unfair to them; Rick Berman has been with Trek for a long time and brought a lot of good works including one of my favorite movies First Contact. Brennon Braga was more of the time travel fan than Rick Berman was, but he makes some good points in his interview: http://trekcore.com/blog/2013/03/exclusive-brannon-braga-interview-part-i/ he also points out how fans like retroactive history; Once they decide they hate you, they go back and hate everything you've ever done even if they didnt previously, and no longer look at your works objectively.
Still it's beside the point since there were other producers involved and they took complete control in season 4 (with exception due These are the Voyages, naturally)
Considering the final episode of Enterprise was on the holodeck of the Enterprise D, it makes me wonder if the entire series was us watching the entire series on the holodeck.
I think that's being kind of generalized and unfair to them; Rick Berman has been with Trek for a long time and brought a lot of good works including one of my favorite movies First Contact. Brennon Braga was more of the time travel fan than Rick Berman was, but he makes some good points in his interview: http://trekcore.com/blog/2013/03/exclusive-brannon-braga-interview-part-i/ he also points out how fans like retroactive history; Once they decide they hate you, they go back and hate everything you've ever done even if they didnt previously, and no longer look at your works objectively.
Still it's beside the point since there were other producers involved and they took complete control in season 4 (with exception due These are the Voyages, naturally)
1. I recognize that Rick Berman was sort of OK on TNG, But once Voyager started? Yeah, the quality took a nose dive down the toilet. They're also responsible for Insurrection.
2. That last sentence is not a compliment. When the series only got good AFTER Berman and Braga left, and they called TATV "a love letter to the fans"?
Considering the final episode of Enterprise was on the holodeck of the Enterprise D, it makes me wonder if the entire series was us watching the entire series on the holodeck.
that was the basis of why no one likes the final episode, not even myself, could it of all been just one giant chapter by chapter story of a starfleet that never existed and was created by reginald barclay? who knows.
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
I love all Star Trek but can say that i only seen DS9 4 times (complete), Enterprise last seasons were great and only got better, it could have been epic ...
1. I recognize that Rick Berman was sort of OK on TNG, But once Voyager started? Yeah, the quality took a nose dive down the toilet. They're also responsible for Insurrection.
2. That last sentence is not a compliment. When the series only got good AFTER Berman and Braga left, and they called TATV "a love letter to the fans"?
That's a BAD thing about B&B.
Yep. Rick Berman & Brannon Braga (and Jeri Taylor and Ken Biller, among others) deserve all of the blame they get. Hindsight may be 20/20 for fans, but it is for THEM as well. Claiming the fans are being too harsh in hindsight? PLEASE. This group of producers had THREE chances to make great Trek: they largely succeeded in TNG, hit-and-missed with VOY, and bombed with ENT.
It's why I couldn't roll my eyes far enough when Braga said at one of the Vegas cons that he wants to work on Trek again. He had multiple chances to get it right, and ultimately failed. Shoot, it took Braga YEARS to admit that "These Are The Voyages..." was a bad idea!
So, yes... B&B gets ostracized, and probably shouldn't be allowed to work in the franchise again, IMO.
Actually I don't drink at all, I was just sticking to the metaphor. And also my total exposure to the word comes from a board game wherein the players are adventurers, after the adventure, at the inn, drinking. About a quarter of the drink cards (mead, ale, wine, dragon'sbreath ale, troll swill, dirty dishwater, etc.) have a chaser, which means you drink the drink and then immediately drink the next drink in your drink pile. So your chaser probably isn't nonalcoholic.
Yep. Rick Berman & Brannon Braga (and Jeri Taylor and Ken Biller, among others) deserve all of the blame they get. Hindsight may be 20/20 for fans, but it is for THEM as well. Claiming the fans are being too harsh in hindsight? PLEASE. This group of producers had THREE chances to make great Trek: they largely succeeded in TNG, hit-and-missed with VOY, and bombed with ENT.
It's why I couldn't roll my eyes far enough when Braga said at one of the Vegas cons that he wants to work on Trek again. He had multiple chances to get it right, and ultimately failed. Shoot, it took Braga YEARS to admit that "These Are The Voyages..." was a bad idea!
So, yes... B&B gets ostracized, and probably shouldn't be allowed to work in the franchise again, IMO.
Opinion being what it is, say what you will about B&B but there are several fans here and many elsewhere that would correct you on Enterprise being a "Bomb". Being horribly time slotted and not even available in several major cities (you couldn't even watch it in Portland, Oregon for a long while), ratings isnt the best indicator either (especially with UPN in its dying days at that point).
Also keep in mind Rick Berman worked on DS9, and yes played a major role in the latter half of TNG, and Voyager wasn't a complete failure but half-way through they had writers/producers jumping ship and that killed any consistency in the writing. And again, i don't consider Enterprise a "bomb" by any stretch.
Opinion being what it is, say what you will about B&B but there are several fans here and many elsewhere that would correct you on Enterprise being a "Bomb". Being horribly time slotted and not even available in several major cities (you couldn't even watch it in Portland, Oregon for a long while), ratings isnt the best indicator either (especially with UPN in its dying days at that point).
Also keep in mind Rick Berman worked on DS9, and yes played a major role in the latter half of TNG, and Voyager wasn't a complete failure but half-way through they had writers/producers jumping ship and that killed any consistency in the writing. And again, i don't consider Enterprise a "bomb" by any stretch.
Your point is taken, but sorry... I (and others) don't just point to Enterprise's bad ratings as the only reason why it failed. It claimed to be a prequel series, yet couldn't let go of the 24th century. It over-sexualized women (especially T'Pol), and did so in a poor way. Character development was stunted, and the stories were stale.
Enterprise was a confluence of many failures and short-comings... that is why it was cancelled.
And, yes, Rick Berman worked on DS9... he was co-creator and executive producer, so the final say on things (like adding Worf to the cast) ultimately rested on him. But DS9's success largely rests with people like Ira Behr and Ron Moore... after all, Berman didn't work on DS9 in a vacuum. When the show launched, TNG was on the air and called for some of his attention... then, they moved to making TNG-centric movies... and then developed Voyager... a lot of that was happening all at once, at times. His attention was divided across the entire franchise.
And, as for "writers jumping ship" on Voyager... go read Ron Moore's comments about the VOY writing room. He spent three episodes on that show, after DS9 wrapped, and left because the writers didn't strive for consistency or continuity. It was a mess.
Team Berman certainly had their moments, but I don't look on them with rose-colored glasses, either.
Your point is taken, but sorry... I (and others) don't just point to Enterprise's bad ratings as the only reason why it failed. It claimed to be a prequel series, yet couldn't let go of the 24th century. It over-sexualized women (especially T'Pol), and did so in a poor way. Character development was stunted, and the stories were stale.
Enterprise was a confluence of many failures and short-comings... that is why it was cancelled.
And, yes, Rick Berman worked on DS9... he was co-creator and executive producer, so the final say on things (like adding Worf to the cast) ultimately rested on him. But DS9's success largely rests with people like Ira Behr and Ron Moore... after all, Berman didn't work on DS9 in a vacuum. When the show launched, TNG was on the air and called for some of his attention... then, they moved to making TNG-centric movies... and then developed Voyager... a lot of that was happening all at once, at times. His attention was divided across the entire franchise.
And, as for "writers jumping ship" on Voyager... go read Ron Moore's comments about the VOY writing room. He spent three episodes on that show, after DS9 wrapped, and left because the writers didn't strive for consistency or continuity. It was a mess.
Team Berman certainly had their moments, but I don't look on them with rose-colored glasses, either.
Oversexualized? Are you kidding? With exception of some of the lame decon scenes(which sexualized the men as much as the women) it was pretty much on par with the rest of trek(minus 2 whole scenes in season 3), minus maybe later-half TNG. You're sensationalizing a bit on this point.
As for tech, are you talking the time travel plot or the sets/tech? I can agree on the time travel plot not adding much to the show but i don't think for a moment it killed the show especially since in all it accompanies less than a dozen episodes in the entire series(unless you count the Xindi arc though that is debateable). As for the tech, I think everyone agree'd with the pre-launch comments by B&B that having Enterprise use more primitive tech than what we had in real life just to match the low-budget sets of TOS just wouldn't fly or make much sense, but they did try to line it up somewhat and it certainly had more "Nowdays tech" and no 24th century tech.
The plots were also decent and while season 1 is somewhat disjointed (like all trek in its early days), it started finding itself in season 3 and hit the sweet spot in season 4 on all notes. Season 5 was also planned to continue upon the trend of season 4.
Failing ratings is the only reason Enterprise died. While it had a slow shaky start (like every single trek ever), it wasnt able to recover like Treks in the past because of a dying UPN, horrible time-slotting (and a time-slot switch), and unavailability in certain parts of the country. Anti-enterprise sentiment by some butthurt fans, however, did not help motivate Paramount to take the hit and keep the show afloat as the ratings climbed into season 5 and beyond.
Comments
That's fair enough. I can see what you mean. Archer missed many things, so he couldn't have known them.
TRIBBLE Vulcans weren't necessarily a totally bad thing, but it felt to me, like it went TOO far in that direction.
Fair enough. This is after all just a hypothesis, I'm not expecting it by any means to be perfect.
As for that episode, well, maybe not, BUT...think about the focus, Archer's dog. He basically spends an entire...well...night in sickbay bitchin and moaning about that alien species (whose name I can't be bothered to remember) merely because Porthos peed on their sacred fern or whatever.
This same alien species, who, if they would've had ANY contact with ANY other species, would probably be regarded as the most intolerant, overly-sensitive species anyone could meet. I mean, they got offended by people EATING in front of each other. I mean, that's nearly as bad and stupid as the Tak-Tak from Voyager who do all those movements and took offense to Janeway putting her hands on her hips.*
So, are they really that bad? Or was Archer merely exaggerating (or possibly outright lying, but I could see that being TOO far-fetched) so that any stupid moves he might have made were lessened?
*Though in fairness, Janeway doing that usually means she's gettin ready to start the killin, so I suppose that one is understandable.
They're not "bad," they're different. Different social mores that seem ridiculous to a Western audience but make sense to them.
Take, say...crossing fingers. As in "I hope this works, fingers crossed." Y'know? Only in Vietnam, the Vietnamese think that crossed fingers look like lady parts. So flashing this at someone is the equivalent of calling them the C-word. Or, consider the thumbs-up.
What you think it means: "It's all good!"
What it means in most Arabic countries: A thumbs up in any Middle Eastern country pretty much means, loosely translated, that you hope the person you're gesturing at has a very pleasant trip to the proctologist.
Underachieving mid-level officials who got to their positions by blatant nepotism and show a complete lack of any of the skills they claim to have (i.e. diplomacy skills, command skills, or general competence at anything) tend to daydream of greatness. As Archer's only difference from John Scalzi's minor character Lars Win-Getag is that Archer wasn't literally farted to death, I completely understand how you came to this conclusion.
They are also canon if more trek fans would actually pay attention to their depiction in TOS and stopped assuming they were all like Spock.
Seriously the Vulcans have always been jerks.
TNG probably did character development better than most but didn't realize they had to do it until season 3.
DS9 would be up their too. I ended up really liking the series. Every character was changed from their experiences.
Voyager...I wanted to like this series but there were just too many improbabilities. Would a starship captain just accept known terrorists into his/her crew. There should have been a lot more resistance to this with the crew and the Maquis. If I was doing it the whole first season would have been tension between Starfleet and Maquis. I think BSG did a better version of a crew all alone in space trying to find home. BSG seemed like anything could go wrong. Voyager made it seem as if they were mildly inconvenienced being in the Delta Quadrant.
Enterprise...I like the show for what it was trying to do...again if you weren't part of the holy trinity...Archer, T'pol and Trip...very little was written about you. Hoshi was extremely annoying to me. IMO Shran is the only bright spot and lead to me really liking the Andorians. I am saddened when I hear that had it gone another season Shran would have joined the crew.
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
Imagine him calling the Sisko "brownskin". Imagine how fast his head would've been shoved up his own butt-crack.
You don't try to rewrite Canon
You go before it you go past it you go along with it period there is no valid reason to change it
You don't try to rewrite it...Which is stupid to attempt in the first place
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
They were edging toward the Romulan War, but were sunk by the ratings, a legacy bequeathed them by Rick Berman and his fascination with time travel (coupled with his complete lack of anything resembling research on time-travel concepts). Berman was the entire reason there was a Temporal Cold War, and he thought attributing TRIBBLE success to time-traveling alien lizards was cool. (Then again, he thought "These Are the Voyages" would be "a love letter to the fans", so maybe he was a little tone-deaf as regards good ideas.)
Brannon "Threshold" Braga did work on Terra Nova, though...which also showed a complete disrespect for science and the IQs of the viewers.
Actually CBS upgraded TAS to hard canon status several years ago when they released the DVD collections. So, the Kzinti do indeed exist in the Star Trek universe. Furthermore, Kzin has always been labeled on Star Trek sector maps since the TOS movies on up through TNG, DS9, etc.
See for yourself: http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/images/6/62/The_Explored_Galaxy.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20120828225331&path-prefix=en
Also, if Enterprise was Archer bragging, I think he'd make himself look a bit more mature and competent rather than the whiny manchild he's depicted as.
Truth. However, a planned Season 5 episode, entitled "Kilkenny Cats," was slated to include the Kzinti. Having said that, including the Kzinti would include some awkward legal questions as well as trying to figure out how "The Slaver Weapon" could possibly work in canon Trek; I find it likely that "Kilkenny Cats" would have involved re-tooling the Kzinti to work, including possibly changing their name (much as how STO basically did this, with the Ferasans essentially being the Kzinti). But fans would know that it's the Kzinti due to the rough rendering of the Kzinti starship design, which drew visual cues from Star Fleet Universe's take on Kzinti ships (notably the missile pods and three-nacelle design).
Star Trek Star Charts, as close as we'll ever get to an official star chart, also included an interstellar nation called "The Patriarchy" that we've otherwise never heard of; it's an obvious reference to the Kzinti Patriarchy.
While it looked like that in the cliffhanger, it was written off pretty well that the alien lizards had nothing to do with TRIBBLE Success, there was a key assassination that took place in russia, preventing the rise of communism and allowing the TRIBBLE's to focus their forces on the western front. The Alien-lizard things were actually on Earth before the temporal cold war went hot(which happened when they returned to the future) and didn't interfere in Earth history, but their situation changed when the temporal war started and Earth history was altered by a different faction.
As to the other post, even seasons 1 through 2 had plenty of "seed laying" episodes with establishing the andorian and vulcan backgrounds which came into play in season 4, and the enterprise getting its feet wet. Even Season 3 i found plenty good though the plot line maybe extended for too long in that regard.
Again though, you compare Enterprise to any other Trek and it was following the same course, except for voyager (which actually started off pretty well but then the character writing started flying off the rails when producers started leaving after season 3 or so). TNG had an abysmal start and would've been cancelled in todays market, DS9 had a very slow first 3 seasons of extreme episodic nature and almost no serial arcs, even the dominion war arc took a long while to get on its feet(though the build up was worth it in the end).
Though i would still argue Enterprise had plenty good about it through seasons 1-2, these were afterall the early seasons and in that context it did what it needed to do to lay the groundwork for what eventually became the excellent season 4 and what would've been the great seasons 5+.
I think any criticism of them for lack of "time Travel research" is laughable, given the plots in TOS and several of the movies. Time Travel in Trek is never handled realistically or well in any series or movie. Though arguably that can be said of nearly every Science Fiction.
I think that's being kind of generalized and unfair to them; Rick Berman has been with Trek for a long time and brought a lot of good works including one of my favorite movies First Contact. Brennon Braga was more of the time travel fan than Rick Berman was, but he makes some good points in his interview: http://trekcore.com/blog/2013/03/exclusive-brannon-braga-interview-part-i/ he also points out how fans like retroactive history; Once they decide they hate you, they go back and hate everything you've ever done even if they didnt previously, and no longer look at your works objectively.
Still it's beside the point since there were other producers involved and they took complete control in season 4 (with exception due These are the Voyages, naturally)
This is my take on it too.
1. I recognize that Rick Berman was sort of OK on TNG, But once Voyager started? Yeah, the quality took a nose dive down the toilet. They're also responsible for Insurrection.
2. That last sentence is not a compliment. When the series only got good AFTER Berman and Braga left, and they called TATV "a love letter to the fans"?
That's a BAD thing about B&B.
that was the basis of why no one likes the final episode, not even myself, could it of all been just one giant chapter by chapter story of a starfleet that never existed and was created by reginald barclay? who knows.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
You chase your wine?
Freakin' lightweight
Yep. Rick Berman & Brannon Braga (and Jeri Taylor and Ken Biller, among others) deserve all of the blame they get. Hindsight may be 20/20 for fans, but it is for THEM as well. Claiming the fans are being too harsh in hindsight? PLEASE. This group of producers had THREE chances to make great Trek: they largely succeeded in TNG, hit-and-missed with VOY, and bombed with ENT.
It's why I couldn't roll my eyes far enough when Braga said at one of the Vegas cons that he wants to work on Trek again. He had multiple chances to get it right, and ultimately failed. Shoot, it took Braga YEARS to admit that "These Are The Voyages..." was a bad idea!
So, yes... B&B gets ostracized, and probably shouldn't be allowed to work in the franchise again, IMO.
Actually I don't drink at all, I was just sticking to the metaphor. And also my total exposure to the word comes from a board game wherein the players are adventurers, after the adventure, at the inn, drinking. About a quarter of the drink cards (mead, ale, wine, dragon'sbreath ale, troll swill, dirty dishwater, etc.) have a chaser, which means you drink the drink and then immediately drink the next drink in your drink pile. So your chaser probably isn't nonalcoholic.
The Red Dragon Inn. Great game.
Opinion being what it is, say what you will about B&B but there are several fans here and many elsewhere that would correct you on Enterprise being a "Bomb". Being horribly time slotted and not even available in several major cities (you couldn't even watch it in Portland, Oregon for a long while), ratings isnt the best indicator either (especially with UPN in its dying days at that point).
Also keep in mind Rick Berman worked on DS9, and yes played a major role in the latter half of TNG, and Voyager wasn't a complete failure but half-way through they had writers/producers jumping ship and that killed any consistency in the writing. And again, i don't consider Enterprise a "bomb" by any stretch.
Your point is taken, but sorry... I (and others) don't just point to Enterprise's bad ratings as the only reason why it failed. It claimed to be a prequel series, yet couldn't let go of the 24th century. It over-sexualized women (especially T'Pol), and did so in a poor way. Character development was stunted, and the stories were stale.
Enterprise was a confluence of many failures and short-comings... that is why it was cancelled.
And, yes, Rick Berman worked on DS9... he was co-creator and executive producer, so the final say on things (like adding Worf to the cast) ultimately rested on him. But DS9's success largely rests with people like Ira Behr and Ron Moore... after all, Berman didn't work on DS9 in a vacuum. When the show launched, TNG was on the air and called for some of his attention... then, they moved to making TNG-centric movies... and then developed Voyager... a lot of that was happening all at once, at times. His attention was divided across the entire franchise.
And, as for "writers jumping ship" on Voyager... go read Ron Moore's comments about the VOY writing room. He spent three episodes on that show, after DS9 wrapped, and left because the writers didn't strive for consistency or continuity. It was a mess.
Team Berman certainly had their moments, but I don't look on them with rose-colored glasses, either.
Oversexualized? Are you kidding? With exception of some of the lame decon scenes(which sexualized the men as much as the women) it was pretty much on par with the rest of trek(minus 2 whole scenes in season 3), minus maybe later-half TNG. You're sensationalizing a bit on this point.
As for tech, are you talking the time travel plot or the sets/tech? I can agree on the time travel plot not adding much to the show but i don't think for a moment it killed the show especially since in all it accompanies less than a dozen episodes in the entire series(unless you count the Xindi arc though that is debateable). As for the tech, I think everyone agree'd with the pre-launch comments by B&B that having Enterprise use more primitive tech than what we had in real life just to match the low-budget sets of TOS just wouldn't fly or make much sense, but they did try to line it up somewhat and it certainly had more "Nowdays tech" and no 24th century tech.
The plots were also decent and while season 1 is somewhat disjointed (like all trek in its early days), it started finding itself in season 3 and hit the sweet spot in season 4 on all notes. Season 5 was also planned to continue upon the trend of season 4.
Failing ratings is the only reason Enterprise died. While it had a slow shaky start (like every single trek ever), it wasnt able to recover like Treks in the past because of a dying UPN, horrible time-slotting (and a time-slot switch), and unavailability in certain parts of the country. Anti-enterprise sentiment by some butthurt fans, however, did not help motivate Paramount to take the hit and keep the show afloat as the ratings climbed into season 5 and beyond.