Star Trek: Enterprise (TV Review)

Spoiler Alert

Anyone who has not seen any episode of Star Trek: Enterprise (2002-2005) is hereby advised that this post may contain a few unavoidable spoilers.

I’ve always loved Star Trek. The original series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and even Voyager have always been my firm favourites for as long as I can remember. I have all the DVDs and I watch them over and over without getting bored. When I was still a lad and just starting to really get into writing, I even wrote a few Star Trek fan fictions.

The one thing I didn’t like, or should I say refused to like, was Enterprise (2002-2005). In fact, I’ve been pretty vocal about my contempt for this show in the past. However my wife and I were desperately hunting for something new to watch that filled the Star Trek void. Sure, Star Trek: Picard was good, but it doesn’t quite fit the classic Star Trek feel and the less being said about Discovery, the better. So after a little gentle coaxing from the wife, I decided to give Enterprise a second chance.

I won’t lie to you, I still hate the theme tune. But I clenched my teeth and decided to bear with it long enough to see if I enjoyed the actual program and, to my great surprise, I did! Maybe it was just my bad experience with Discovery or maybe I was being genuinely unfair before but I have to say that I really liked Enterprise and feel it fits in nicely with the first three spin-off shows. The first two seasons meandered a little bit but it really picked up with season 3 and its season-long story arc focusing on the Xindi invasion and the formation of the United Federation of Planets in season 4. Oh and if you like time travel episodes, this show has got them in spades.

Anyway, let’s talk characters. While TNG, DS9 and Voyager focused on different characters for individual episodes (resulting in definable ‘Riker episodes’, ‘Data episodes’, ‘Odo episodes’, ‘Neelix episodes’, etc.) Enterprise focuses almost entirely on three key characters: Captain Archer, Sub-Commander T’Pol and Commander Tucker (‘Trip’). The rest of the regular cast serve as little more than supporting characters with loose fitting backstories and all the substance of a bunch of turnips. Boring supporting characters aside, I quite liked this approach. It was reminiscent of the original series with its focus on Kirk, Spock and Bones and allowed the three key players a bit more opportunity to develop. I could take or leave Archer but I really liked T’Pol and Trip.

Most Star Treks also have very familiar settings aboard their ships: the bridge, where all the shaking happens when the ship is attacked; the transporter room, where people get beamed up; engineering, where things explode; sickbay, where people with bizarre alien diseases are cured by the CMO at the last moment. Well, Enterprise has all these and more, including the command centre, the situation room and my personal ‘favourite’: the decontamination chamber. This bizarre little room was an obvious and cynical attempt to increase viewing figures particularly confusing and upsetting. Whenever a crewman (or usually two or more crewmen of opposite genders) returned from an alien planet, they went into this dimly lit room where they stripped down to their underwear and started lazily sponging each other down with shiny oil. You know, to decontaminate each other.

Decontamination wasn’t the only subtle-as-a-bat’leth attempt to bring sex appeal to this show. Almost from the outset, it is clear there’s going to be a romantic subplot between Trip and T’Pol (I knew it the first time I saw them together in that decontamination chamber). Very good, we like romantic subplots. Foreshadowing it by having both characters stripping off and giving each other massages to help treat Trip’s insomnia, on the other hand, seems a tad obvious. They didn’t develop any serious kind of relationship until the very end of the last season, and even then it seemed like their relationship was only just starting to get real when Trip was quite unnecessarily and unceremoniously killed at the last minute.

Speaking of which, the final episode was a major disappointment. Most Star Trek spin-off series ended with a thrilling two-part bang. Enterprise ended with a one-part episode in which Will Riker from The Next Generation runs a holodeck simulation of the Enterprise crew on their way to sign the charter which led to the formation of the United Federation of Planets. A brief bit of shooting, a lot of Riker and Troi musing about following orders and Trip’s untimely demise. The end. Probably the most boring episode of the series, with the possible exception of the Risa episode.

I feel like I’ve done nothing but criticise in this review. Please don’t be misled. I may be fifteen years late to the party, but I finally decided I like this show. I hereby renounce any of the bad stuff I’ve said about it (apart from anything I’ve said in this post, of course). It feels a million times more ‘Star Treky’ than anything else we’ve been served up in the last fifteen years and gives you a good solid forty minutes of family friendly sci-fi/drama entertainment more or less every time. It boasts well written story arcs and a good mix of humour, drama and excitement and (mostly) likeable characters (I want to punch that snotty-nosed Reid in the chops though). Watch it with my blessing.

Just make sure you skip the intro sequence.

My rating: 🖖🖖🖖🖖

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ATTENTION AUTHORS:

Every Tuesday, I post a new edition of Spotlight: a short post which shines a proverbial spotlight on a published novel or collection of short fiction. If you would like to have your book considered for a future edition of Spotlight, drop us an e-mail including a short synopsis of your book and a link to where we can buy it. Better yet, send me a copy of your book and I can include a mini-review.

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Please be advised that due to a recent surge in interest, I am presently committed to a significant number of reviews/interviews over the next couple of months. If you would like an interview or review, I would still love to hear from you, though it is unlikely that I will be able to begin work immediately.

You can check out our previous interviews here:

• Sharleen Nelson, author of The Time Tourists [2]
• D. Wallace Peach, author of the Shattered Sea duology [2]
• Jacob Klop, author of Crooked Souls
• H.L. Walsh, author of From Men and Angels [2]
• G.M. Nair, author of Duckett and Dyer: Dicks for Hire
• Georgia Springate, author of Beyond
• S.E. Morgan, author of From Waterloo to Water Street