If ever there was anything that failed to deliver it was Star Trek: Enterprise. I my opinion it was the worst of all the Star Trek series. As with anything else it wasn’t all bad but I think it failed to deliver.
Like I discussed with regard to Voyager, Enterprise didn’t make use of what was unique about it. Enterprise was a prequel and so was a marvellous opportunity to explore the beginnings of the Star Trek universe. Instead we get a mess!
Firstly I think that a prequel, especially with science fiction, is an extremely difficult thing to do. If we look at TOS through the eyes of the 21st century much of the technology looks antiquated. True we don’t have phasers, warp drive or transporters but our data storage and communication technology is probably ahead of what they had. Since Enterprise is set before TOS the writers are in a very difficult position. They have to make the technology look better than today’s but worse than a 1960s view of the future. I think that this is one thing that was done quite well but the series, for me, didn’t quite go far enough.
The titular Enterprise is very smiler to all the ships that have gone before. It has artificial gravity, phasers and transporters.
Had I been writing a Star Trek prequel I would have tried to make it as different as possible. Firstly the Enterprise would have been a rotating ship. In fact there was an Enterprise, depicted in The Motion Picture, that looked like it rotated. There has never been a rotating ship in Star Trek. Doing this would have set the series apart and really given the impression that this ship was old.
It is stated in TNG that there were no phasers in the 22nd century. I know technically phase pistols are something different but I’m not buying it. I would have had rail-guns, nukes and torpedoes (without the photonic) basically the only science fiction thing the Enterprise should have had was warp drive.
The transporter in Enterprise is also a little silly. Granted the crew are are little skittish about using the transporter but we never have a transporter accident. It almost seems that this transporter is more reliable than those in later series. Though having said that there is an episode which deals with the transporter.
These are just some of my thoughts on the series. They’re not mistakes exactly but, to me, they show a lack of thought in the development of this show. However their are two other things I shall be discussing at a later date which are more mistake like – the Temporal Cold War and the aliens of Enterprise.
Unstable Orbit 