Today and yesterday marks the 15th anniversary of Star Trek: Enterprise being announced. Star Trek Enterprise is my favorite of the franchises. Not a completely common thought, but there is a group of us who really enjoy the show and have active interaction together.
It also gave me some of my greatest friendships.
I grew up watching Star Trek. My father was a fan of the original (TOS), my mother of The Next Generation (TNG). There were marathons on Saturdays from a WV channel that just happened to manage to get far enough that we could catch it on our TV. They would tape it, and years later my sister and I would enjoy the commercials with brick sized cell phones and news about Boris Yeltsin making a trip to DC.
But I didn’t really get into Star Trek till I was in high school. I had started to get into sci-fi when I found a box with my mom’s old books by Anne McCaffrey, and so when I found the old marathon tapes I decided I might as well. So I watched, and enjoyed.
So I decided then that I should netflix Enterprise, as it was available as it had only recently gone off the air (so about the time I graduated high school). I had heard odd reviews about it. About how the finale made no sense (Which admittedly it does not, but that is a post for another day), how there was this weird cannon couple no one liked (Not so true) and in general it wasn’t as good (also not true).
Enterprise has the disadvantage of being a prequel. Prequels are harder to manage because you have to make sure it doesn’t change the story already out there. Enterprise managed to do this, though it had some growing pains. It also had the disadvantage of 30 years of technological development which meant that to look futuristic to the time they were airing, they also had a problem with looking more advanced than the ships that came after them. And there was 9/11 to deal with, which also caused the theme of season 3, which was a bit more heavy-handed on the social commentary then perhaps other shows went.
I also think it suffered from a sense of crew exhaustion. Some of these writers and crewmen had been working on the franchise for almost 20 years. TV viewers had been watching Trek for as long.
Enterprise is a good show. I believe if it had been given a fifth season we would have seen more connections to TOS, and later shows. Season 4 is probably their best, yet many had already given up on it, especially TPTB. So the show only got 4 seasons (oddly, still more seasons the TOS, which my father uses as the golden standard).
Again, we won’t go into the awful finale.
If you are a Trek fan, or sci-fi in general, I recommend you watch Enterprise. Its a fun show, although like any it has its high and low moments. I personally love it.
Sokorra Lewis 