Epic Star Trek Re-Watch - Enterprise - Season 1 - It's Bakula Time! - Week 1 NOW!

Star Trek is fantastic. It's been part of popular culture in one form or another for 55 years at this point and has entertained and inspired millions of people over the past half-century.

So lets watch ALL of it. (Yes even the shite episodes :nod:

)

We've already worked through The Original Series, The Animated Series, the first six movies, The Next Generation, it's four movies, Deep Space Nine and most recently Voyager. It's been a long road, getting from there to here, but it's time to go back to the roots of the Federation.

Wikipedia wrote:Star Trek: Enterprise, originally titled simply Enterprise for its first two seasons, is an American science fiction television series created by Rick Berman and Brannon Braga. It originally aired from September 26, 2001 to May 13, 2005 on United Paramount Network (UPN). The sixth series in the Star Trek franchise, it is a prequel to Star Trek: The Original Series. Set in the 22nd century, a hundred years before the events of The Original Series, it follows the adventures of the Enterprise, Earth's first starship capable of traveling at warp five, as it explores the galaxy and encounters various alien species.

Following the culmination of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and with Star Trek: Voyager scheduled to end, Paramount asked Braga and Berman to create a new series to continue the franchise. Rather than setting it in the 24th century alongside Deep Space Nine and Voyager, they decided to set it in an earlier period, allowing them to explore new parts of the Star Trek fictional universe. Wanting a more basic, relatable, character-driven series, Berman and Braga concentrated on a core trio: Captain Jonathan Archer (played by Scott Bakula), Commander Trip Tucker (Connor Trinneer), and Sub-commander T'Pol (Jolene Blalock).

Paramount Pictures commissioned the series following the termination of Star Trek: The Next Generation to accompany the ongoing Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. They wanted it to help launch UPN, their newly established network. Berman, Piller, and Taylor devised the series to chronologically overlap with Deep Space Nine and to maintain thematic continuity with elements that had been introduced in The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. The complex relationship between Starfleet and ex-Federation colonists known as the Maquis was one such element and a persistent central theme. Voyager was the first Star Trek series to feature a female commanding officer, Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew), as the lead character. Berman served as head executive producer in charge of the overall production, assisted by a series of executive producers: Piller, Taylor, Brannon Braga, and Kenneth Biller.

So, arm the grappers, slather on your decontamination gel and watch as Enterprise boldly goes where no one has gone before.

Where to find it?

https://www.paramountplus.com/gb/ (UK)

Proposed Schedule

Here's a look at the proposed schedule for the next few years. Shows in red are still airing, or will be soon so it's not possible to determine an exact schedule for them. I'll review closer to the time.

The Original series - Aug 22nd to Jan 8th 2022
The Animated Series - Jan 9th 2022 to Jan 29th 2022 (3 Weeks)
Movies 1 to 6 - Jan 30th 2022 to Feb 19th 2022 (3 Weeks)
The Next Generation - Feb 20th 2022 to Jan 21st 2023 (48 Weeks)
Movies 7 to 10 - Jan 22nd 2023 to Feb 4th 2023 (2 Weeks)
Deep Space Nine - Dec 2022 to Nov 2023 (47 weeks)
Voyager - Nov 2023 to May 2024 (46 Weeks)
Enterprise - May 2024 to Nov 2024 (26 Weeks)
Kelvin Movies 1 to 3 - Nov/Dec 2025 (2 Weeks)
Discovery
Picard

Lower Decks
Prodigy
Strange New Worlds

Spoiler Policy
I'm not anticipating this being a big issue, but I would remind everyone that we do have some newcomers to Star Trek going through the shows with us. When discussing episodes try and refrain from mentioning specific plot points outside of spoiler boxes. General comments are fine unspoilered through. Especially try and refrain from talking about plot points and character development further down the road. So please don't mention characters leaving/dying/getting promoted or other major developments etc.

Just watch the episodes and let us know what you think!

I really need to wrap up the last couple of VOY episodes.

Looking forward to Enterprise as it's the one where I had kind of checked out on Trek by the time it came along so only have very limited memories of it!

I've already posted my reviews of the series/movies that came after Enterprise, so this'll be my last Trek re-watch thread.

I'll get the first of my Enterprise reviews up soon.

I maintain that the opening theme is actually really good and the hate for it was ridiculously overblown. It only got bad in Seasons 3 and 4 when they did that awful remix.

I also maintain that Enterprise is one of the best, if not the best, pilot episodes of any Trek series.

Enterprise also brings back memories of getting the episodes before their UK airing from IRC of all places....good lord that makes me feel old.

Broken Bow: Part 1 & 2

Holy gooseberry fool, widescreen! We are really in the future (past) now!

And a theme song, that's different.

100 years on from first contact and the Vulcans haven't even bothered to tell us about the Klingons? Vulcans are such pricks. :lol:

I assume Vulcans etc can travel faster than warp 4/4.5? Do they not share their technology or did they want humans to figure it out by themselves? And it looks like we've only just invented transporters? Is that a human technology, all the other races seem to have it by the time of all the previous series.

Anyway, the episode itself. It's always weird starting a new series of Trek and getting used to a completely new set of people. I'm not sure who I like and who is going to be annoying yet.

As an opening it started well, got a bit flabby in the middle before going back to being ok. But enough about my sex life...

The doctor seems like a character. What is it with Trek and funny doctors? Bones was funny, Bashir was weird, The Doctor was hilarious. Crusher really let the entire profession down by being mostly normal, although she did strawberry float a ghost.

So far, I'm missing Voyager, but hopefully I'll soon snap out of that. And hopefully I'll stop hoping for hologram Al to show up.

Fight or Flight

The translator doesn't seem very suited to this. But I imagine they have highlighted her screaming and crying because she's going to grow as a character over the rest of the season.

Not an awful episode and was nicely creepy in places. It didn't blow me away though.

Strange New World

This might have worked better without the hallucinogenic pollen causing the crew to get paranoid. The crew seem unsure about Vulcans anyway, so what if there really were rock monsters and T'Pol was communicating with them, how would the crew react?

As it was, it was ok.

Unexpected

It's really weird watching this show after all of the previous series. Jumping back 100 years before Kirk & co makes all of the technology seem really old fashioned and primitive. I have to stop every so often and remember that they are far far far advanced from where we are. :lol:

It's early days, but so far this is my favourite episode of Enterprise. Weird new aliens, Klingons being mocking arseholes and a bizarre pregnancy all added up to a funny story.

Although, it was another example of a holodeck causing problems. They really need to ban that technology

Terra Nova

It's off putting they they keep mentioning "Boomers". Surely those bastards aren't still around in another 150 years? :dread:

How did cutting the rock in half make it any easier to lift? It'd make sense if they lifted one piece out of the way, but they still lifted up the entire thing. :lol:

I didn't like this one much, the basic plot was an ok idea, but the execution was boring.

Moggy wrote:
Strange New World

This might have worked better without the hallucinogenic pollen causing the crew to get paranoid. The crew seem unsure about Vulcans anyway, so what if there really were rock monsters and T'Pol was communicating with them, how would the crew react?

As it was, it was ok.

To this day, I insist that this episode should have been called "Bad Trip".

The Andorian Incident

I'm watching Andor on Disney+ at the moment. I'm hoping this also has Andy Serkis playing a nasty prison inmate.

Is Weyoun in every Star Trek series? :lol:

His voice is way too distinctive, every time he speaks I end up thinking the Dominion are about to attack.

An excellent episode (those sneaky Vulcans!!) but that was one hell of an abrupt ending. Lots of great build up and then it was over in seconds.

Breaking the Ice

The tension between humans and Vulcans isn't something I expected, I always assumed we were best of friends, even if we don't really understand each other.

The two main plots suffered from being so bloody obvious "make sure you get back before the ice cracks!" obviously meant that the two blokes would get in trouble. And I didn't for a second believe that T'Pol would choose to leave.

But I liked the episode, the awkward Q&A with the Irish kids was hilarious.

Civilization

It always amazes me in Trek that almost every intelligent species looks so human. And these ones even knew what a dog was.

This was a bit gooseberry fool. The hidden base thing was done in the Andorian episode and I didn't give a crap about the "romance". I like Scott Bakula, but he's no William Shatner/Riker in the galaxy class shagging leagues.

I'm not sure she'll be my favourite character in this, Vulcans are too humourless for me (other than Spock), but T'Pol is stealing the show here. The rest of the crew are a little dull, Bakula being an exception but that might just be because I loved Quantum Leap.

Looking on Wikipedia, the filming for this episode was paused due to 9/11. I know that was a long time ago, but it feels like yesterday to me, it's weird that I am now watching "modern day" Trek.

Fortunate Son

I liked that we got to see human space travellers that were not Starfleet or hapless colonists.

At this stage of human space exploration, it makes sense that some of the other races would look at us as easy prey. "that ship only does warp 1.5? Haha, let's steal their stuff!". :lol:

The main freighter guy was a complete twat, but deliberately so. His desire for revenge made sense, we all know hotheads who would do the exact same thing (if we had spaceships

).

Cold Front

The temporal cold war was mentioned in the first episode but I wasn't sure if it'd continue on. I'm glad to see it does, a war raging across time could be amazing. But I know Enterprise isn't highly thought of, so I'm not getting my hopes up! I guess if you have Scott Bakula you kind of have to do something time travel related.

I'm assuming that the sealed room won't stay sealed for long. At least, I hope it doesn't!

A very good episode!

Not going to lie, I'm struggling to get into this at the moment.

Can't quite put my finger on any specific thing that's the cause, think it's more just an accumulation of issues

Silent Enemy

All the Trek series do this, but it's weird that the secondary plot never really fits with the primary one. Enterprise is under serious attack from hostile and unknown aliens....and one of the crew is just wandering around asking what somebody likes to eat. :lol:

Odd that they didn't reveal the aliens or who they were. Hopefully it's left as a mystery (not everything has to be explained!) but I am guessing they'll be back at some point.

Dear Doctor

I'm not completely sold by this show yet, there's something about it that feels a bit odd. But it is interesting to see the Trek universe before things like the prime directive.

I get the doctor's concerns, but I don't think I could ever not help a people avoid extinction if I had the ability to stop it. The concerns over the "lesser" race on the planet are valid, but their possible evolution in 1,000 years is irrelevant compared to the actual extinction that is about to happen.

I'd make a gooseberry fool Starfleet officer. :lol:

Sleeping Dogs

That decontamination scene at the end. :datass:

They knew what they were doing there. And that's just Reed.... :lol:

A so-so episode. It held my attention and it's great to see the Klingons before they made friends with the Federation.

Shadows of P'Jem

I like the tension and mistrust between humans and Vulcans. They see us as children (they're not really wrong) and we see them as overbearing parents (again not really wrong). I guess Spock must have seen Kirk as being a toddler - he wasn't wrong.

That scene where they are tied up went on for far too long. And the tits in the face was like something out of a Carry On movie.

Weyoun is a decent actor but he plays the Andorian exactly like Weyoun. It's a shame as it's hard to suspend disbelief with this character.

Not a bad episode but felt like it was backstory/build up to something that's coming later.

Shuttlepod One

Wow, this was brilliant.

A simple concept, Trip and Malcom think they are stranded and they are running out of air. But it was very well done - other than the weird dream sequence!

I think I'd have chosen heat over a bit of extra oxygen.

Going to struggle to keep up with Moggy pace, he's definitely broken the Warp 5 barrier early!

Currently watching Terra Nova - why does every civilisation seem to regress to some kind of state barely one step above Neanderthal when left alone for more than 5 minutes? :lol:

Fusion

Reading up after watching, the writer said they wanted to bring sensuality to Star Trek in a 9 1/2 weeks way. I've never seen that movie, but I didn't really get a sensual vibe, it felt far more like an analogy for rape. And the rapist didn't really get any comeuppance, other than being asked to leave.

I liked the other Vulcan (no idea of his name! ), his misconceptions about humans were funny.

Overall though, this was a nasty little episode.

Rogue Planet

I was going to intentionally misspell the episode title and make a hilarious joke about a red planet. But then realised it'd be a terrible joke.

That's a lot of light for a planet with no sun. :lol:

Shapeshifters who are also mind readers...it's like Spock and Odo had a baby...

This was gooseberry fool.

Acquisition

They really like using Weyoun don't they! He's better here as it's less obviously him but that voice is a dead giveaway. :lol:

After doing so much work with the Ferengi on DS9, they really went back to the feral nasty Ferengi here. Which makes sense, it is a prequel after all.

It's weird to have a "comedy" episode like this, when it involves people wanting to rape and enslave other people. You kind of let that go for stuff from the '60s, but this is from 2002!

Not an awful episode, but far from good.

Oasis

The Netflix write up for this sounds awful, but I'm just going to roll with it.

Ghosts on a crashed ship, I'm guessing that they won't actually be dead, but that whatever is on the crashed ship the Enterprise crew will go let it out. The trader was fun, it seems as normal as cigarettes and alcohol to us but for an alien I guess coffee is very exotic.

Odo! Another bad casting choice, he's a good actor but like Weyoun his voice is way too recognisable, d'ya know what I mean?

This was very similar to the DS9 episode (I think Odo was in that one!) where somebody programmed holograms to keep him company. I get that you don't want to be lonely, but would you really want to live forever surrounded by holograms? I guess the daughter had no choice but to acquiesce, she couldn't exactly slide away. But I don't get why the dad wanted to stay there, fair enough to say don't go away to the daughter, but why not both leave?

Finally an alien race that doesn't know what a dog is! It's amazing just how many seem to know what a dog, cat, songbird etc are.

This was ok but it just felt like a retread of that DS9 episode, some might say that it's ok to repeat stories but if I was making a Trek series masterplan then I definitely/maybe try and be more original.

Detained

Dean Stockwell :wub:

I love Dean Stockwell so this was simultaneously the best episode (because he's in it) and the worst (because he wasn't in it enough).

It's fun that Starfleet captains in this time period don't really give a gooseberry fool about local laws. And then in the future Picard will allow a kid to be executed for trampling on flowers. To be fair though, it was Wesley...

Overall a decent episode, a little heavyhanded on the moral messaging though.

I'm just under halfway through the first series now, watched Silent Enemy last night.

It's decent enough but definitely see why the show never really took off in the same way as the trilogy of TNG/DS9/VOY did. Despite a good premise of "mankind first takes to the stars for a major exploration (even though they've already been doing it for about a century...)" it doesn't really seem to have done enough with that yet.

There should have been lots of tension and interest in how things were done before all of the tech and protocol that we are used to was available, but that hasn't really transpired. The lack of a proper universal translator felt like it was going to be a big deal at first for example, but has largely played little role so far. Same with the transporters which have rapidly become just what we are used to from a standing start of "well we don't even know if people can go in these safely!!!" The differences they are choosing to spend time on just aren't the interesting parts for me - look how much longer it takes us to do boring things like surveying a comet, ooh the exciting early days of space travel! :lol:

What seems to be the developing "time war" plot that is underlying things isn't really getting me excited either. But I'll see how things develop.

The crew are decent enough but after 12 episodes so many of them are still just a bit beige for want of a better word. Archer is decent (though as Moggy says how much of that is just residual goodwill toward Bakula I don't know!) and I really like the Doctor (yet again the Doctor of a ST show proving to be the MVP!) but beyond that it's somewhat meh to awful. Boomer guy is as annoying as that nickname. The only interesting thing communications officer Sato seems to have done so far is solve the mystery of someone's favourite food. "Trip" is annoying as strawberry float with his country bullshit ("yee haw cap, well I tell ya I'm just about as happy as a Klingon in Sto-vo-kor!") and I think I only just realised in the last episode that the British guy is supposed to be the tactical officer, I though he was the strawberry floating engineer! :lol:

I'm having a decent enough time though, it's just not exactly a slam dunk of a start to the show!

EDIT: also I strawberry floating hate the theme tune :lol:

I quite like the theme tune. :shifty:

It's definitely a rough start and I think Bakula carries it himself for a while, but it gets a little better each season until by the end it's actually quite good.
I agree that they don't exactly make it very exciting to start with though.

T'Pol is good.
Trip definitely grew on me as did Tucker (Though I'd never go as far as to say I really liked the character).
Sato and Mayweather are horrendously underused throughout the entire show. Neither of them ever really gets a chance to do much.

But Phlox is easily the best character from the lot.

Vox Sola

It happened on the other shows as well, but the tech on this show is laughable in places. I get they had to make it look older than TNG/DS9/VOY, but some of the tiny screens on the handheld devices. :lol:

They are using weird disc things to save video of sporting events, by 2002 we were downloading (legally :shifty:

) music and video. YouTube wasn't far off launching. Why the strawberry float did they think we'd go back to discs?

And the computer monitors on the desks look like they just bought some from Dell. Budgets might not have been high, but surely they knew screen technology might have moved on a bit from 2002's state of the art?

Anyway, a mostly gooseberry fool episode. I'd rather it focused on the eating is the same as mating offended aliens than the daft creature.

Fallen Hero

A good episode. The Vulcan lady didn't seem very Vulcan (jokes!) but the actress did a great job.

I still don't quite understand how fast warp speeds are, getting to warp 5 seems like an accomplishment but sounds crap compared to the warp 9-9.9 speeds we've heard of in the other Trek series. It seems humans are quite far behind the other races!

Desert Crossing

Do trips to Risa ever go well? :lol:

The Kurgan :dread:

Sweaty topless Bakula, like a sci-fi Top Gun. :lol:

I liked this and thought it was brave that in 2002 they decided to do a terrorism story that wasn't screaming about killing all "terrorists" while eagles flew around stars and stripes.

Tucker has grown on me, I thought he was going to be irritating at the start of the series, but he's a decent character.

Two Days and Two Nights

They finally get to Risa :lol:

And mentioned pronouns, this episode would be on the front page of the Daily Mail for 3 days if it aired today

I don't get the universal translator thing in this series. Hoshi uses a handheld device and deliberately left it behind. But Archer and the two Casanovas seem to just he speaking to anybody and it's all translated?

Erghh, this was a poor episode. Really poor. The two idiots and their casual homo/trans phobia hasn't aged well. Hoshi's story was dull, Archer's was dull and Mayweather's was like a piss poor O'Brien "I got injured on the holodeck!" rip off.

I read they had bugger all money left for this episode, but that doesn't excuse the crap stories.

Meh.

Shockwave: Part 1

Now that is a cliffhanger ending. I'm glad I'm watching this 20 year late, I'd be furious if I had to wait months to get the concluding part.

Decent episode, that ramped up nicely for the ending. As it's only part 1, I'll reserve judgement of the story until I've seen part 2.

End of season 1!

Epic Star Trek Re-Watch - Enterprise - Season 1 - It's Bakula Time! - Week 1 NOW!

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