I always thought the Krenim should have been a new enemy, attacking the other factions with torpedoes that could tear right through us, using their weapon ship and leaving the 29th century to break the rules to help us survive...
A Krenim enemy has been foreshadowed.
I'm really disappointed at what they did with the actual weapon ship though...using it to open a temporal vortex, like the Enterprise-E was able to do with its regular deflector? It was such a waste.
Sure, the Big E was able to travel a few hundred years back with its deflector. The weapon ship managed 200,000 years.
It was always obvious its original function would not be used to solve the Iconian storyline, because then the whole thing would never have happened. But do notice it was explicitly NOT destroyed yet. We'll see it again.
As much as I have issues with some of Cryptic's business decisions, they are very good at patching up/elaborating on poorly-done plot points or missed opportunities from the shows/films. The Vaadwaur and the Iconians are perfect examples. Both were only really shown/mentioned in one episode, but there was honestly so much room for improvement and development of those two species, and so Cryptic made them major parts of the STO storyline.
The Temporal Cold War arc had a lot of promise in Enterprise, but the story kinda got away from the writers and got muddied up a bit with the whole Sphere Builder/Xindi arc. Yes, both the Temporal Cold War and the Sphere Builder/Xindi arcs are linked, but the linkage wasn't made too clear in the show and it left a lot of plot holes as a result. I look forward to what Cryptic is planning with regards to the Temporal Cold War, and from what I've seen so far they're moving in a very interesting direction that is very true to the philosophies of the Star Trek universe.
To me it had no promise. This was supposed to be a series about Future's Past, not future's future. It was something shoehorned in by ignorant execs with no respect for Trek. And Enterprise as a series paid the price.
BUT. Since it does exist and we know about things like timeships in Voyager. It does make sense to tap into this now. But I'm a starship Captain not a Timeship Captain. Cryptic has done well in taking these incomplete plot pieces and making something out of them, so I'm willing to wait and see. Frankly I like the Pastak's adventures so that gives me hope, even if I don't want to touch time travel with a stick bigger than Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagan.
Let me put this as delicately as I can: How many times do you have to stick your hand in the time travel fire before you figure out it burns???
The entire arc was terrible and bringing it back was an even worse one. Kudos to Manny Coto for booting it out of the timeline entirely first thing in season 4. Which reminds me: how the hell is it happening at all since, as previously mentioned, it was reverted out of existence?
Seems to me Craptic thought it through about as well as Berman and Braga did.
Coto was a legit miracle worker. No other way to say it.
That said, the others are right. We need to actually start what Archer and Daniels finish. From our perspective. I wish it wasn't so. But apparently it is.
But let's move past our part in this history quickly. Explore strange new worlds please, let the guys from the 27th and 29th centuries with time ships fight this fight and leave us out of it.
I too will reiterate. I HATE TIME TRAVEL.
"Rise like Lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you-Ye are many they are few"
I hated the Temporal arc in ENT. In TNG it was stated that the Federation had only charted 11% of the galaxy, and only a tiny fraction of that had been explored.
We may only know 11% of the galaxy but that doesn't mean that exploring everything up to that final percent is going to make for good, entertaining fiction. That's why DS9 and Voy jumped to other quadrants before the local neighborhood was completely flushed out. It's possible that they could have based more shows on internal Federation matters or more local exploration (just as its possible for STO to do the same now), but more mileage was available through different settings.
..and humanity, by nature is genetically coded to spread out and explore. if we consider time as being as much a journey as where, then they are both, for all intense purposes, 2 in the same thing. seeing as the future is always waiting for us all to catch up with it (well, minus a few red shirts) it matters little if we have only experienced 11% of total space in the now.
regarding the temporal war, and having that as a storyline, the temporal war did happen, and in lieu of recent events, it would make less sense for them, 'not to' take us down that route. in fairness i'd be happy with any storyline as long as it is well written. the art team consistently produce amazing work, and if the writing can match that, most of us will be very happy.. i say most because, lets be honest, there are always those who seem underwhelmed with everything.
If there is one thing which I have learned from reading fanfiction it would be never judge a plot idea until reading the finished product. Sometimes you'll see a story plot you think the writer can't possibly go wrong with, there's no way they can TRIBBLE it up. Then you read it and they dissapoint your every expectation and you find yourself asking, "why did they do this?".
And sometimes you find a plot you think can't possibly work but you read it anyway and it ends up being one of the better things you've ever read.
The whole premise of Enterprise was terrible. It was made when "Prequels" were the in-thing...Star Wars, etc. It was tragic and couldn't stand not being as advanced as DS9 and Voyager, so it started doing weird things.
Hull plating that was more powerful than shields?
Tucker being able to disable Borg-assimilated systems?
Using the transporter to extract components from enemy ships?
The list could go on and on and on, but basically it sucked.
Eh. I'm gonna see how Cryptic handles this. But once the whole Temporal Cold War story thing is completed; Who knows what Cryptic has in mind for the next story arc.
they have their own universe they can spin a tale anyway they like, and they come up with this?
Because...
they have their own universe they can spin a tale anyway they like
Duncan i wont argue with you on this, your a fan of this plot device, i am not i say we both agree to disagree and leave it as that , as two gentlemen should
Appearently it is our destiny to be constantly at war in this game. I'm still waiting for that "new dawn" and "era of exploration". Somthing like the Romulan mission in which we discover and explore New Romulus would be very nice.
I thought the iconian arc was gonna suck until i actually played it to completion. Then i thought it was great.
That said, i thought ENT was awesome, right up until the moment alien space TRIBBLE appeared for NO reason... However, i don't think the Temporal Cold War is a dead end. It just needs a better treatment than S4 gave it. I reckon that if there had been a S5, the TCW would have been much better realized.
Real Temporal Operative: Purchased the Special Temporal Agent pack before it was even officially announced!
Read the first DTI novel. It specifically addresses all of the Time Travel shenanigans in Trek and manages to make complete sense of them. Elegantly to boot.
Yay! Another DTI fan!
Cryptic's Dev staff should read both of those DTI novels if they're going to keep doing time travel storylines.
They erased the Borg transwarp network from history...you know, the one Voyager used to get home, that all our transwarp drives are based on, the one the Borg are using to attack us...but after the mission that massive change to the timeline supposedly doesn't affect anything at all?
I took that as erasing one and only one transwarp gateway, the one next to New Romulus. Which was only there because we erased that asteroid in the first place. Which didn't really make sense to me, but I'll ignore it because it was a cheap plot device.
I will NEVER understand if why Enterprise wanted to cop-out and use the future, why they didn't use the 29th Century and bring the Wells and Aeon into the story. Those designs were so great and could have been amazing, especially since STO has built a foundation on one episode!
I will NEVER understand if why Enterprise wanted to cop-out and use the future, why they didn't use the 29th Century and bring the Wells and Aeon into the story. Those designs were so great and could have been amazing, especially since STO has built a foundation on one episode!
I think it's because Enterprise didn't know at all what they wanted. The original story they did follow screwed with established canon so much that they had to cop-out saying "Nothing regarding the Xindi was documented" - the whole show is just a huge writing failure.
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
I will NEVER understand if why Enterprise wanted to cop-out and use the future, why they didn't use the 29th Century and bring the Wells and Aeon into the story. Those designs were so great and could have been amazing, especially since STO has built a foundation on one episode!
I think it's because Enterprise didn't know at all what they wanted. The original story they did follow screwed with established canon so much that they had to cop-out saying "Nothing regarding the Xindi was documented" - the whole show is just a huge writing failure.
Firstly, I wouldn't have made Vulcans the bad guys, who held humans back for 100-years. Enterprise should have been TOTALLY defenceless...it was a ship of exploration for God's sake! It's maiden voyage should have been the monumental journey to Vulcan, escorting T'Pol (in robes, not a catsuit) and some other dignitaries.
There should have been NO transporter, because they hadn't developed it yet. Roddenbury always wanted the 1701 to land every week, but it was too expensive...that would have been so cool though, instead of that awful shuttlepod and Decon Chamber nonsense.
First contact with the Klingons was supposed to be so terrible, that it took Starfleet into war. Now, I would have had the Klingon immune system react very badly to contact with humans, creating an almost plague that spread through the Empire...it was intention, but the Klingons saw it as an attack.
Polarizing the hull palting proved to be more effective than shields in the 24th Century, which did make me sick, because that was a terribly unfair advantage, the same as giving Enterprise weapons.
They wanted to make a prequel and that means you can't have your cake and eat it too.
They wanted to make a prequel and that means you can't have your cake and eat it too.
I agree with everything
This in particular here is true - they were so desperate for franchise recognition that they even had to put the Borg in ffs.
There's literally nothing redeeming about the show in my personal opinion. With Voyager, when I catch a re-run on TV or something I know there are at least a cloven hoof full of episodes that are fun to watch. With Enterprise, I switch channels or switch off.
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
I guess we'll se the annorax back in action soon again.
Remember the story about the nutcase a-hole krenim scientist who's wife was erased from the time stream when the first alteration backfired? Who would expect someone like that with access to a temporal dread to go rogue.....
It was kinda obvious something was going to happen when his wife dumped all her personal logs into that temporally shielded computer core, especially given that there are at least a couple of films (including one about a guy who falls for the AI on his phone) as well as an episode of both Criminal Minds and NCIS where after reading or watching a lot of stuff one of the team falls for someone they have never met (might be more but those are the ones I can remember).
Plus he was never the nicest guy to talk to, was he?
They wanted to make a prequel and that means you can't have your cake and eat it too.
I agree with everything
This in particular here is true - they were so desperate for franchise recognition that they even had to put the Borg in ffs.
There's literally nothing redeeming about the show in my personal opinion. With Voyager, when I catch a re-run on TV or something I know there are at least a cloven hoof full of episodes that are fun to watch. With Enterprise, I switch channels or switch off.
It never made sense the way the Borg behaved in Enterprise.
Their mission was to assimilate Earth in the past...so why didn't they? Instead of heading off in that transport, why not just start assimilating the population?
And next, what were they carving a ship up in space for? What was that achieving?
HOW was dreadful-Reed able to make a phaser that could kill more Borg than any other weapon in 200-years?
Tucker, able to disable Borg assimilated systems?
Why did those drones return to a doomed vessel, with a bomb literally just about to go off? They should have ALL boarded Enterprise at that point or done that anyway, because it was a more sophisticated ship!
Not being able to assimilate Phlox...why? And then, he's able to destroy the nanoprobes?
I could keep going and going and going with Enterprise, but needless to say...I don't rate it.
I will NEVER understand if why Enterprise wanted to cop-out and use the future, why they didn't use the 29th Century and bring the Wells and Aeon into the story. Those designs were so great and could have been amazing, especially since STO has built a foundation on one episode!
I think it's because Enterprise didn't know at all what they wanted. The original story they did follow screwed with established canon so much that they had to cop-out saying "Nothing regarding the Xindi was documented" - the whole show is just a huge writing failure.
Firstly, I wouldn't have made Vulcans the bad guys, who held humans back for 100-years. Enterprise should have been TOTALLY defenceless...it was a ship of exploration for God's sake! It's maiden voyage should have been the monumental journey to Vulcan, escorting T'Pol (in robes, not a catsuit) and some other dignitaries.
There should have been NO transporter, because they hadn't developed it yet. Roddenbury always wanted the 1701 to land every week, but it was too expensive...that would have been so cool though, instead of that awful shuttlepod and Decon Chamber nonsense.
First contact with the Klingons was supposed to be so terrible, that it took Starfleet into war. Now, I would have had the Klingon immune system react very badly to contact with humans, creating an almost plague that spread through the Empire...it was intention, but the Klingons saw it as an attack.
Polarizing the hull palting proved to be more effective than shields in the 24th Century, which did make me sick, because that was a terribly unfair advantage, the same as giving Enterprise weapons.
They wanted to make a prequel and that means you can't have your cake and eat it too.
How could the ship having weapons be a bad idea? Only an idiot would send a ship like that out to explore anything without being able to defend itself
As for the temporal cold war nonsense, it was a very bad idea to bring that back. Note that the reason it ended so suddenly was because the studio higher ups explicitly told them to put a stop to it. That should be a pretty big red flag for being a good idea to do any kind of follow up on
How could the ship having weapons be a bad idea? Only an idiot would send a ship like that out to explore anything without being able to defend itself
As for the temporal cold war nonsense, it was a very bad idea to bring that back. Note that the reason it ended so suddenly was because the studio higher ups explicitly told them to put a stop to it. That should be a pretty big red flag for being a good idea to do any kind of follow up on
They shouldn't have had weapons that surpass basic defensive/utility lasers for the simple reason that solving problems in that day and age should have been something requiring more than raising shields and firing weapons. Ironically, in TNG the mighty Enterprise-D was always confronted with something that was so much more advanced and powerful they had to find ways other than shooting to prevail. In Enterprise, the "polarized hull" and the "phaser cannons" they casually develop (it's canon Starfleet used lasers still when "the cage" took place) are more or less superior to shoot anything the universe throws at them.
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
If it was a ship of exploration, I don't think it should have had a single weapon! They could have improvised along the way and come up with clever ideas...ejecting warp plasma, maybe making a mine, using the deflector in some way, etc. It should have been more intelligent, less cheap and less like the other Star Trek series, because that was the whole point! Everyone wanted a 25th Century series or even 29th, but instead they those the 22nd and couldn't stand being old-fashioned.
If it was a ship of exploration, I don't think it should have had a single weapon! They could have improvised along the way and come up with clever ideas...ejecting warp plasma, maybe making a mine, using the deflector in some way, etc. It should have been more intelligent, less cheap and less like the other Star Trek series, because that was the whole point! Everyone wanted a 25th Century series or even 29th, but instead they those the 22nd and couldn't stand being old-fashioned.
A unarmed ship of exploration doesn't make much sense, however. Exploration means facing the unknown - being unarmed would indeed be foolish. TNG showed that "Explorers" were Starfleet's equivalent of battleship grade armed vessels - that does make sense! I do however completely agree with your notion that the way they executed was very poorly - it wasn't the 22nd century. Their weapons and tech was way more advanced than TNG tech and they could shoot their way out of anything when even the Galaxy-class Enterprise always met species and phenomena vastly more powerful than they were themselves.
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
ST explores the possibilities while still managing to stay Sci-Fi.
I like that it does this, pushing the boundaries even if they can be excessive at times as in much of the Voyager series.
Mirror universe is my least liked aspect of ST, so much so that I've had to skip episodes that deal with it. Yet STO's take on it happened to have resulted in some real good items added (mirror uniforms, terran science dreadnought, finally more attention to Science). The Terran NPCs also make for a good challenge in their use of abilities (unlike say the borg who cycle OP tachyon beams, tractor beam, and invisitorp of doom), and some variation in enemies encountered by the many terran ships seen.
Time is but another frontier of exploration in itself as was interstellar warp travel. Alternate timelines and dimensions (fluidic space, Q continuum, mirror universe, etc.) are part of that.
I'd say give it a chance, maybe some good will come out of it to you as well, as in my example with mirror stuff.
Enterprise was terrible, and the Temporal Cold War was a big part of that terribleness. But one thing Cryptic has proven itself really, really good at is taking terrible, half-baked, and/or abandoned ideas from the franchise and turning them into something interesting and coherent, whether that's plot nubbins out of the bottom of Voyager's fry basket or goofy bits from the Abrams reboot.
So I'm willing to see how it plays out. Curious, even.
(Also, as others have said: it would be nice to have some old-fashioned exploring again. I realize the whole nebulae/frontier exploration system was a mess that doesn't fit with the big maps, that involved a lot of backend work, and that had sort of devolved into three or four basic, repetitive types of mission--clear the base, run around in a circle scanning all the things, clear the system, fly around in a circle scanning all the things... I think that was about it. But I still miss the whole idea of it, and wish somebody could come up with a replacement for it. I know it was hard to implement and had problems, and I appreciate Cryptic feeling like it should come out if it wasn't going to get better. But NEW STARS, dude! It was like you didn't know what you were going to get, even if you knew deep down exactly what you were going to get. Anyway.)
Enterprise was terrible, and the Temporal Cold War was a big part of that terribleness. But one thing Cryptic has proven itself really, really good at is taking terrible, half-baked, and/or abandoned ideas from the franchise and turning them into something interesting and coherent, whether that's plot nubbins out of the bottom of Voyager's fry basket or goofy bits from the Abrams reboot.
So I'm willing to see how it plays out. Curious, even.
(Also, as others have said: it would be nice to have some old-fashioned exploring again. I realize the whole nebulae/frontier exploration system was a mess that doesn't fit with the big maps, that involved a lot of backend work, and that had sort of devolved into three or four basic, repetitive types of mission--clear the base, run around in a circle scanning all the things, clear the system, fly around in a circle scanning all the things... I think that was about it. But I still miss the whole idea of it, and wish somebody could come up with a replacement for it. I know it was hard to implement and had problems, and I appreciate Cryptic feeling like it should come out if it wasn't going to get better. But NEW STARS, dude! It was like you didn't know what you were going to get, even if you knew deep down exactly what you were going to get. Anyway.)
I could never believe them making an entire ground zone out of the Vaudwaar, a space and ground zone out of the Voth...and they were both only in one episode!
I could never believe them making an entire ground zone out of the Vaudwaar, a space and ground zone out of the Voth...and they were both only in one episode!
Another example that impressed me was tying the neural parasites from the TNG episode "Conspiracy" to the Iconians and Vaadwaur, thereby tying up a 25-year-old narrative loose end in a way that actually made a kind of sense and locked a whole bunch of puzzle pieces together. Like I said, Cryptic's been really good at that. Good enough that I think it's possible they could turn one of Trek's worst and least-loved storylines into something cool.
Another example that impressed me was tying the neural parasites from the TNG episode "Conspiracy" to the Iconians and Vaadwaur, thereby tying up a 25-year-old narrative loose end in a way that actually made a kind of sense and locked a whole bunch of puzzle pieces together. Like I said, Cryptic's been really good at that. Good enough that I think it's possible they could turn one of Trek's worst and least-loved storylines into something cool.
That was one of the approaches I hated. It was completely unnecessary to tie the parasites to the Iconians and turn them into weird starship troopers bug. Likewise, the V'Ger ship in the Borg red alerts - tying V'Ger to the Borg that way is completely nonsensical. While I appreciate the nod to certain fan theories, those are two remarkably bad choices in my opinion.
Their original story with the Deferi and fitting them into the universe (including the path to 2409 backstory) and the Breen, however, was very enjoyable and I'd wish for more of that.
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
I could never get behind the Temporal Cold War. Rick Berman had a fetish for time travel and Enterprise let him cut loose with it. I am not opposed to Games with a time travel theme like Chrono Trigger. But taking Starfleet, and giving them time machines and temporal prime directives, and sending them out on temporal protections. Ehhh... We've all seen the Alien Time Traveling TRIBBLE. We all know how this is going to end.
Cryptic might have turned the Remans into a sympathetic race, they might have turned just a simple half breed romulan commander into a force of nature. But Trek's biggest crutch has always been this naive temporal starfleet that claims to protect everything and yet does nothing.
Oh yeah, and thanks for dropping that hint in the mission about Romulans joining the federation. I am forever skeptical that Cryptic might just decide to turn all the factions into one now.
Comments
Sure, the Big E was able to travel a few hundred years back with its deflector. The weapon ship managed 200,000 years.
It was always obvious its original function would not be used to solve the Iconian storyline, because then the whole thing would never have happened. But do notice it was explicitly NOT destroyed yet. We'll see it again.
To me it had no promise. This was supposed to be a series about Future's Past, not future's future. It was something shoehorned in by ignorant execs with no respect for Trek. And Enterprise as a series paid the price.
BUT. Since it does exist and we know about things like timeships in Voyager. It does make sense to tap into this now. But I'm a starship Captain not a Timeship Captain. Cryptic has done well in taking these incomplete plot pieces and making something out of them, so I'm willing to wait and see. Frankly I like the Pastak's adventures so that gives me hope, even if I don't want to touch time travel with a stick bigger than Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagan.
Coto was a legit miracle worker. No other way to say it.
That said, the others are right. We need to actually start what Archer and Daniels finish. From our perspective. I wish it wasn't so. But apparently it is.
But let's move past our part in this history quickly. Explore strange new worlds please, let the guys from the 27th and 29th centuries with time ships fight this fight and leave us out of it.
I too will reiterate. I HATE TIME TRAVEL.
..and humanity, by nature is genetically coded to spread out and explore. if we consider time as being as much a journey as where, then they are both, for all intense purposes, 2 in the same thing. seeing as the future is always waiting for us all to catch up with it (well, minus a few red shirts) it matters little if we have only experienced 11% of total space in the now.
regarding the temporal war, and having that as a storyline, the temporal war did happen, and in lieu of recent events, it would make less sense for them, 'not to' take us down that route. in fairness i'd be happy with any storyline as long as it is well written. the art team consistently produce amazing work, and if the writing can match that, most of us will be very happy.. i say most because, lets be honest, there are always those who seem underwhelmed with everything.
And sometimes you find a plot you think can't possibly work but you read it anyway and it ends up being one of the better things you've ever read.
Hull plating that was more powerful than shields?
Tucker being able to disable Borg-assimilated systems?
Using the transporter to extract components from enemy ships?
The list could go on and on and on, but basically it sucked.
Duncan i wont argue with you on this, your a fan of this plot device, i am not i say we both agree to disagree and leave it as that , as two gentlemen should
Absolutely.
That said, i thought ENT was awesome, right up until the moment alien space TRIBBLE appeared for NO reason... However, i don't think the Temporal Cold War is a dead end. It just needs a better treatment than S4 gave it. I reckon that if there had been a S5, the TCW would have been much better realized.
Yay! Another DTI fan!
Cryptic's Dev staff should read both of those DTI novels if they're going to keep doing time travel storylines.
I took that as erasing one and only one transwarp gateway, the one next to New Romulus. Which was only there because we erased that asteroid in the first place. Which didn't really make sense to me, but I'll ignore it because it was a cheap plot device.
I think it's because Enterprise didn't know at all what they wanted. The original story they did follow screwed with established canon so much that they had to cop-out saying "Nothing regarding the Xindi was documented" - the whole show is just a huge writing failure.
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Firstly, I wouldn't have made Vulcans the bad guys, who held humans back for 100-years. Enterprise should have been TOTALLY defenceless...it was a ship of exploration for God's sake! It's maiden voyage should have been the monumental journey to Vulcan, escorting T'Pol (in robes, not a catsuit) and some other dignitaries.
There should have been NO transporter, because they hadn't developed it yet. Roddenbury always wanted the 1701 to land every week, but it was too expensive...that would have been so cool though, instead of that awful shuttlepod and Decon Chamber nonsense.
First contact with the Klingons was supposed to be so terrible, that it took Starfleet into war. Now, I would have had the Klingon immune system react very badly to contact with humans, creating an almost plague that spread through the Empire...it was intention, but the Klingons saw it as an attack.
Polarizing the hull palting proved to be more effective than shields in the 24th Century, which did make me sick, because that was a terribly unfair advantage, the same as giving Enterprise weapons.
They wanted to make a prequel and that means you can't have your cake and eat it too.
I agree with everything
This in particular here is true - they were so desperate for franchise recognition that they even had to put the Borg in ffs.
There's literally nothing redeeming about the show in my personal opinion. With Voyager, when I catch a re-run on TV or something I know there are at least a cloven hoof full of episodes that are fun to watch. With Enterprise, I switch channels or switch off.
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It was kinda obvious something was going to happen when his wife dumped all her personal logs into that temporally shielded computer core, especially given that there are at least a couple of films (including one about a guy who falls for the AI on his phone) as well as an episode of both Criminal Minds and NCIS where after reading or watching a lot of stuff one of the team falls for someone they have never met (might be more but those are the ones I can remember).
Plus he was never the nicest guy to talk to, was he?
I just hope it won't be rushed and non immersive like the Iconian war was.
It never made sense the way the Borg behaved in Enterprise.
Their mission was to assimilate Earth in the past...so why didn't they? Instead of heading off in that transport, why not just start assimilating the population?
And next, what were they carving a ship up in space for? What was that achieving?
HOW was dreadful-Reed able to make a phaser that could kill more Borg than any other weapon in 200-years?
Tucker, able to disable Borg assimilated systems?
Why did those drones return to a doomed vessel, with a bomb literally just about to go off? They should have ALL boarded Enterprise at that point or done that anyway, because it was a more sophisticated ship!
Not being able to assimilate Phlox...why? And then, he's able to destroy the nanoprobes?
I could keep going and going and going with Enterprise, but needless to say...I don't rate it.
How could the ship having weapons be a bad idea? Only an idiot would send a ship like that out to explore anything without being able to defend itself
As for the temporal cold war nonsense, it was a very bad idea to bring that back. Note that the reason it ended so suddenly was because the studio higher ups explicitly told them to put a stop to it. That should be a pretty big red flag for being a good idea to do any kind of follow up on
They shouldn't have had weapons that surpass basic defensive/utility lasers for the simple reason that solving problems in that day and age should have been something requiring more than raising shields and firing weapons. Ironically, in TNG the mighty Enterprise-D was always confronted with something that was so much more advanced and powerful they had to find ways other than shooting to prevail. In Enterprise, the "polarized hull" and the "phaser cannons" they casually develop (it's canon Starfleet used lasers still when "the cage" took place) are more or less superior to shoot anything the universe throws at them.
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A unarmed ship of exploration doesn't make much sense, however. Exploration means facing the unknown - being unarmed would indeed be foolish. TNG showed that "Explorers" were Starfleet's equivalent of battleship grade armed vessels - that does make sense! I do however completely agree with your notion that the way they executed was very poorly - it wasn't the 22nd century. Their weapons and tech was way more advanced than TNG tech and they could shoot their way out of anything when even the Galaxy-class Enterprise always met species and phenomena vastly more powerful than they were themselves.
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I like that it does this, pushing the boundaries even if they can be excessive at times as in much of the Voyager series.
Mirror universe is my least liked aspect of ST, so much so that I've had to skip episodes that deal with it. Yet STO's take on it happened to have resulted in some real good items added (mirror uniforms, terran science dreadnought, finally more attention to Science). The Terran NPCs also make for a good challenge in their use of abilities (unlike say the borg who cycle OP tachyon beams, tractor beam, and invisitorp of doom), and some variation in enemies encountered by the many terran ships seen.
Time is but another frontier of exploration in itself as was interstellar warp travel. Alternate timelines and dimensions (fluidic space, Q continuum, mirror universe, etc.) are part of that.
I'd say give it a chance, maybe some good will come out of it to you as well, as in my example with mirror stuff.
So I'm willing to see how it plays out. Curious, even.
(Also, as others have said: it would be nice to have some old-fashioned exploring again. I realize the whole nebulae/frontier exploration system was a mess that doesn't fit with the big maps, that involved a lot of backend work, and that had sort of devolved into three or four basic, repetitive types of mission--clear the base, run around in a circle scanning all the things, clear the system, fly around in a circle scanning all the things... I think that was about it. But I still miss the whole idea of it, and wish somebody could come up with a replacement for it. I know it was hard to implement and had problems, and I appreciate Cryptic feeling like it should come out if it wasn't going to get better. But NEW STARS, dude! It was like you didn't know what you were going to get, even if you knew deep down exactly what you were going to get. Anyway.)
I could never believe them making an entire ground zone out of the Vaudwaar, a space and ground zone out of the Voth...and they were both only in one episode!
Another example that impressed me was tying the neural parasites from the TNG episode "Conspiracy" to the Iconians and Vaadwaur, thereby tying up a 25-year-old narrative loose end in a way that actually made a kind of sense and locked a whole bunch of puzzle pieces together. Like I said, Cryptic's been really good at that. Good enough that I think it's possible they could turn one of Trek's worst and least-loved storylines into something cool.
That was one of the approaches I hated. It was completely unnecessary to tie the parasites to the Iconians and turn them into weird starship troopers bug. Likewise, the V'Ger ship in the Borg red alerts - tying V'Ger to the Borg that way is completely nonsensical. While I appreciate the nod to certain fan theories, those are two remarkably bad choices in my opinion.
Their original story with the Deferi and fitting them into the universe (including the path to 2409 backstory) and the Breen, however, was very enjoyable and I'd wish for more of that.
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Cryptic might have turned the Remans into a sympathetic race, they might have turned just a simple half breed romulan commander into a force of nature. But Trek's biggest crutch has always been this naive temporal starfleet that claims to protect everything and yet does nothing.
Oh yeah, and thanks for dropping that hint in the mission about Romulans joining the federation. I am forever skeptical that Cryptic might just decide to turn all the factions into one now.