Why did Enterprise fail?

[mkiker2089]

With Star Trek added to Netflix I, a HUGE Voyager fan huge as in fan, not as in I'm the size of a house by the way , have discovered the one Trek that I never bothered to watch. So why did so many Trekkies just not tune in?

I know for me, and this will sound petty, but it was the opening theme song. I remember tuning in with a group of friends for the first broadcast. We were intrigued by the opening but then when the Rod Stewart song that wasn't even sung by Rod Stewart came on it felt like Braga had lost his mind. They didn't even go a different route with it and have a woman sing it, or any normal man, they got a RS rip off artist.

I think the first few episodes were weaker than the norm also. ST was built on optimism and this show started out mired in self pity. The Vulcans are so evil, they hold us back, we are so weak etc.. Yes I get that this is supposed to be the start of it, but somehow the self pity just never worked for me. The second season reached back to a spirit more like TOS and things picked up. But perhaps at that point the damage was done? I know I never hated the show, but I never tuned back in either. I just never thought about it again.

On a side not, I didn't care for the last movie either for similar reasons. What's the future of the Franchise? I for one wonder if it's dead. Or perhaps it's just leaving me behind? Do people really like it or was it more of a "it's better than Nemesis" reaction?

[stypee]

Honestly I think it was just overkill. Even the hardcore and nuttiest of all trekkies needed a break in my opinion. Like you said, the last movie kinda sucked smelly ass farts and for me it just felt like everything was going through the motions, there was no excitement or anything, just.. blah.. I've honestly never saw a single episode and have completely forgotten about Enterprise until just reading this.

[Burson_Fouch]

Franchise oversaturation
Boring characters
technological inconsistencies (the ship in this series looked more advanced then the one in classic Trek)
Bad writing
Bad Theme song
Scott Bakula


It picked up a little bit in the 4th season but by then it was too late.

[mkiker2089]

I disagree about Scott Bakula but the rest is pretty much right on.

I was also a little surprised about the "throw away aliens". As in ones you'll see once and never again and that never appeared in the earlier programs. Prequels need to be very careful about what they introduce.

[Mach6]

I go with Franchise Oversaturation, Boring Characters, & Bad Writing.

I watched about half of the 1st season of Enterprise before giving up on it. I remember really digging the pilot episode about the Enterprise crew delivering a Klingon prisoner on Earth back to the Klingons. Then, it seemed every episode was about the technologically inferior Enterprise getting its ass kicked by some superior force, aliens, or their ships. The Vulcan T’Pol had to offer some technobabble or perform a miracle to save them. I got tired of the formula very quickly. The only characters worth a damn were Archer, Trip, & T’Pol. Everybody else was either boring or in the alien doctor’s case, annoying. I agree with mkiker that Bakula was good in his role.

It also failed because there were better options for fans of science-fiction/space shows. At the same time, you had Farscape which was light years (sorry for the bad pun) ahead of Enterprise in special effects, character design, makeup, acting, action, & writing. While Farscape was offering some truly innovative & creative Sci-Fi, Enterprise seemed to be offering more of what we seen for the last 30 years.

I really enjoyed the new Star Trek movie & got the Blu Ray. Even though I hated the lens flares, I have to give J.J. Abrams a lot of credit for updating & taking a chance to not stick with the established Trek mythology. The new cast worked & it’s great to see that Trek’s weapons finally have the auto-fire option. It had more of an “it’s better than all The Next Generation’s movies except for First Contact or the original’s odd numbered movies” reaction to me.

[Kenneth Morgan]

I couldn't really get interested in "Eneterprise", but I'm not sure why. Maybe the thought that the franchise was tired and needed a break had something to do with it. I do know that the idea of making the series final episode an utterly needless crossover with ST-TNG was a huge error in judgement.

As for the theme song, it didn't bother me that much. After all, "Star Cops" had a less-than-thrilling theme song, but it turned out OK, for its brief run.

[Jim_Thomas]

Franchise oversaturation
Boring characters
technological inconsistencies (the ship in this series looked more advanced then the one in classic Trek)
Bad writing
Bad Theme song
Scott Bakula


It picked up a little bit in the 4th season but by then it was too late.

I don't think Bakula was the problem as much as it was that TPTB had no idea what they wanted Archer to be, essentially wasting Bakula's considerable talent.

[Andrew Forbes]

Scott Bakula

11. Thou shalt not diss The Count.

[mkiker2089]

Watching a few more episodes I now remember another reason I stopped watching, "The Speeches." Almost every episode has someone acting stubbornly one dimensional followed by an impassioned and often 3-5 minute speech by a crew member. that character then does an equally stubborn reversal and behaves more according to the collective norm.

Particularly annoying was the episode about the freighter crew who kidnaps and tortures a pirate. The black guy gives a speech which I fast forwarded through and suddenly everyone cries, hugs, has group sex, and declares intergalactic peace for everyone.

By trying to appeal to non-trek fans they forgot that not everything trek is bad. Ramping up the emotion to this level ruined disbelief.

[Steve T Power]

Wasn't there some big stink kicked up because some romulan broad had perky nipples? This is what's wrong with star trek fandom...

[mkiker2089]

Wasn't there some big stink kicked up because some romulan broad had perky nipples? This is what's wrong with star trek fandom...

If there was I don't think it was from Trek fans. All the way back to the green slave girls Trek has been built on sex appeal. Just off the top of my head I can remember the tiny uniforms in TOS and TNG, Seven of Nine was in a vacuum form suit in Voyager, and there was some hotness in DS9 I'm sure. Enterprise had quite a few shower scenes also. There were some feminists who claimed to be fans long enough to argue but I'm not sure about specifics.

[Bryan Byun]

Yeah, from what I recall, the Star Trek franchise was tanking -- Voyager was a big disappointment, Insurrection was just lame -- and Paramount's plan to invigorate the franchise was to create an intelligently written series that was true to the spirit of Star Trek and took giant creative risks. HA HA HA HA sorry. No, their big move was to repackage their weak-sauce patented Ron Berman/Brannon Braga formula into a Star Trek series that pretended to not be Star Trek (remember that they didn't even have the Trek name on the show at first).

Problem is, if you're going to alienate your core audience in the attempt to draw a fresh new crowd, your show has to be able to stand on its own. Sadly, that first season of Enterprise was deadly dull. It wasn't just bad Trek, it was bad TV, period. So you had this weird creature that tried to disguise its Trek heritage, losing most casual Trek fans, and wasn't good enough to draw a non-Trekker audience. By the time they retooled the formula and decided to be a real Star Trek series again, it was too late.

I don't know what the problem is with Paramount. They're constantly crapping on their fanbase, rarely if ever listening to their feedback, and taking as few risks as possible, even if it means killing the franchise. Voyager and Enterprise were solid concepts with intriguing premises -- they could have been great series, if TPTB had had the courage.

[the5thghostbuster]

The thing about Enterprise was by the fourth season, it was some of the best Trek in the history of the franchise. It was just a shame two dull season's had to happen first.

[mkiker2089]

The thing about Enterprise was by the fourth season, it was some of the best Trek in the history of the franchise. It was just a shame two dull season's had to happen first.

A lot of people liked Season 3 and 4. I for one am torn on those even. It seems like the quality picked up but the artistic direction was still off. Vulcan's became the alien equivalent of the "red menace" and the soap opera keyed up a bit more. I can't quite put my finger on it though.

[the5thghostbuster]

The thing about Enterprise was by the fourth season, it was some of the best Trek in the history of the franchise. It was just a shame two dull season's had to happen first.

A lot of people liked Season 3 and 4. I for one am torn on those even. It seems like the quality picked up but the artistic direction was still off. Vulcan's became the alien equivalent of the "red menace" and the soap opera keyed up a bit more. I can't quite put my finger on it though.

Three is still a bit flawed, but the season long arc gave it a sense of direction it had been lacking and allowed the show to transform Archer, Trip, and Ta'Pol into well rounded characters. Four honestly became good old fashioned Trek for me, brining out the elements that I loved in the original series and dumping the BS that had built up from TNG forward.

And yes, that was a knock on TNG. While I dug it when I was young, I have grown to increasingly loath the show in many ways. While its cast is brilliant, and there are some great episodes, it also allowed the worst aspects of Roddenberry to come to the surface, from knocking organized religion while at the same time turning Starfleet into a cult, everyone the cast of character being almost entirely written as academics (or rather, what Hollywood imagines academics to be like), and a smug sense of self importance. It is as if Roddenberry and the writers bought into the hype of Star Trek being an all important political and cultural force, and chose to pursue that at the expense of making the series enjoyable.