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About a year ago, I decided I wanted to watch Star Trek: The Next Generation on Netflix from season 2 to the end. That lead to my watching all of ST:Deep Space Nine, ST:Voyager, and now ST:Enterprise. As I enter the second half of Enterprise's final season, I have been evaluating the series and comparing it to the other Star Trek series. I have come to the conclusion that Enterprise is my favorite of the series I've seen.
ST:TNG is classic. It is sci-fi drama, romance, adventure, comedy, with a wealth of potential environments thanks to interstellar travel, time travel, and the holodeck. Jean Luc is a svelte, intelligent captain. Kirk's overblown ego and sexual beast is moved to second in command, Riker. It is a good ensemble cast. The crew was on a mission of exploration and "humanitarian" assistance to the universe. And one of my favorite ST secondary characters, Q, originates here. The Federation is really damn squeaky clean. Over the seven seasons, there was the miserable first season followed by a period of growth, a couple of seasons of cruising, wound down with a season where the writers indulged their whims on storylines, and yet TNG ended with such a fantastic finale. While ENT is my favorite, I must state that TNG is the best ST series.
BUT... The squeaky cleanness started to wear thin near the end. Wesley Crusher or Troi centered episodes were usually my least favorites. While there were some superbly written episodes, there were certainly a good number of duds and dullards sprinkled around.
ST:VOY comes closest to TNG of the other series. Captain Katherine Janeway personifies the idealism of the Federation as she faces the struggle of being on the opposite side of the galaxy with little to no support from others. Where Enterprise on TNG seemed to spend just a portion of its episodes exploring unknown regions of the galaxy, Voyager was forced to spend most of its episodes with completely new aliens to the ST universe. On the ship, Tom Parris spent quite a bit of time on the holodeck playing a Flash Gordon-esque holo-novel. Voyager embraces that approach of adventure and action for the fun of it.
BUT... The show's increase in action sometimes came to the detriment of the plot. The deflector dish became the writers' magical Swiss Army knife. I hate Harry Kim. It cannot be emphasized enough...I HATE Harry Kim and I think both the character and the actor are to blame. And because I watched Voyager after Deep Space Nine (which had some series-long, multi-season long, and multiple episode story arcs), the fact that the only serial aspect of Voyager seemed to be the ship's distance from Earth became a bit annoying to me. Damage done to the ship and trauma that happened to the crew during a story was often forgotten or "cured" before the next episode.
ST:DS9 directly rejected the purity of the Federation. It was darker (literally and figuratively) than previous Star Trek series. DS9 embraced, for better or worse, that many story plots would affect the characters in subsequent episodes. There were few episodes in which the characters seemed to have a reset between episodes. Because of that, Sisko and other characters change from the first episode to the last. Many of the characters have depth rather than a foundation/stereotype which merely reacts to whatever the plot throws at them. I enjoyed the spiritual aspect that was thread throughout the series. And I came to love the slyness of Garak and the pompous display of the classic villain who is the hero in his own mind with Dukat. But it was the character and acting performance of Weyoun by Jeffrey Combs that really grabbed me. I would gladly go back and only watch shows that focused on these three secondary characters.
BUT... There was a horrible section in the series where the Klingons kinda distracted the series from where it was headed. The Dominion War seemed to oddly shift back and forth, as if the writers hadn't developed the exit before going into it. The writers' love of torturing O'Brien started to get old. OMG, where the hell did Bashir's character-changing reveal come from!? While I LOVE Quark, Nog and his son grew to annoy me, and nearly every other Ferengi was overbearing. The parallel with Ferengi and the Three Stooges was frequently too close to the surface for me. I think I ended up tuning out several of the Ferengi-focused episodes in the last couple of seasons (especially the ones involving Quark's mom or the Grand Nagus). And, although it was properly grand and tied up numerous loose ends, the finale was rather frustrating.
With ST:ENT, I feel like it combines my favorite aspects of all of the above series. Starfleet is young and The Federation isn't fully formed, thus the idealism is forming but it is constantly at conflict with circumstances. While not spanning as wide as on ST:DS9, there are more long story arcs and character development. This crew of the Enterprise really are exploring strange, new worlds...that are yet somewhat primally familiar with Trekkers. There is a level of spirituality that makes appearances here (spurned by the Vulcans here, instead of DS9's Bajorans). There is quite a bit of action, but doesn't sacrifice plot or take easy outs like the writers frequently did on VOY. I thought I really enjoyed Jeffrey Combs as Weyoun, but I love him even more as the blue-skinned Shram on ENT.
BUT... I have gotten a bit annoyed with the level of emotion displayed by the Vulcan T'Pol (although there is a plot point that attempts to allow the writers to loosen her emotions for a while). When ENT first aired, I was a periodic watcher and only caught bits and pieces of the Xindi storyline. My recollection was I was annoyed by the military aspect that I didn't expect from a Star Trek series. Watching it now, I caught the show from the beginning and saw how Starfleet struggled between pure exploration and matching up militarily with beings antagonistic against them. But I do see ENT-critics' point about the use of force.
In the end, though, ENT shines because the number of shows that blew me away were numerous, the shows I didn't like were rare, and there aren't any characters that make me want to mute when they are on screen or skip episodes focused on them. I don't think ENT is really different from the other Star Trek series, although it and DS9 probably sit on one side of a Star Trek seesaw with TNG and VOY on the other side.
ST:TNG is classic. It is sci-fi drama, romance, adventure, comedy, with a wealth of potential environments thanks to interstellar travel, time travel, and the holodeck. Jean Luc is a svelte, intelligent captain. Kirk's overblown ego and sexual beast is moved to second in command, Riker. It is a good ensemble cast. The crew was on a mission of exploration and "humanitarian" assistance to the universe. And one of my favorite ST secondary characters, Q, originates here. The Federation is really damn squeaky clean. Over the seven seasons, there was the miserable first season followed by a period of growth, a couple of seasons of cruising, wound down with a season where the writers indulged their whims on storylines, and yet TNG ended with such a fantastic finale. While ENT is my favorite, I must state that TNG is the best ST series.
BUT... The squeaky cleanness started to wear thin near the end. Wesley Crusher or Troi centered episodes were usually my least favorites. While there were some superbly written episodes, there were certainly a good number of duds and dullards sprinkled around.
ST:VOY comes closest to TNG of the other series. Captain Katherine Janeway personifies the idealism of the Federation as she faces the struggle of being on the opposite side of the galaxy with little to no support from others. Where Enterprise on TNG seemed to spend just a portion of its episodes exploring unknown regions of the galaxy, Voyager was forced to spend most of its episodes with completely new aliens to the ST universe. On the ship, Tom Parris spent quite a bit of time on the holodeck playing a Flash Gordon-esque holo-novel. Voyager embraces that approach of adventure and action for the fun of it.
BUT... The show's increase in action sometimes came to the detriment of the plot. The deflector dish became the writers' magical Swiss Army knife. I hate Harry Kim. It cannot be emphasized enough...I HATE Harry Kim and I think both the character and the actor are to blame. And because I watched Voyager after Deep Space Nine (which had some series-long, multi-season long, and multiple episode story arcs), the fact that the only serial aspect of Voyager seemed to be the ship's distance from Earth became a bit annoying to me. Damage done to the ship and trauma that happened to the crew during a story was often forgotten or "cured" before the next episode.
ST:DS9 directly rejected the purity of the Federation. It was darker (literally and figuratively) than previous Star Trek series. DS9 embraced, for better or worse, that many story plots would affect the characters in subsequent episodes. There were few episodes in which the characters seemed to have a reset between episodes. Because of that, Sisko and other characters change from the first episode to the last. Many of the characters have depth rather than a foundation/stereotype which merely reacts to whatever the plot throws at them. I enjoyed the spiritual aspect that was thread throughout the series. And I came to love the slyness of Garak and the pompous display of the classic villain who is the hero in his own mind with Dukat. But it was the character and acting performance of Weyoun by Jeffrey Combs that really grabbed me. I would gladly go back and only watch shows that focused on these three secondary characters.
BUT... There was a horrible section in the series where the Klingons kinda distracted the series from where it was headed. The Dominion War seemed to oddly shift back and forth, as if the writers hadn't developed the exit before going into it. The writers' love of torturing O'Brien started to get old. OMG, where the hell did Bashir's character-changing reveal come from!? While I LOVE Quark, Nog and his son grew to annoy me, and nearly every other Ferengi was overbearing. The parallel with Ferengi and the Three Stooges was frequently too close to the surface for me. I think I ended up tuning out several of the Ferengi-focused episodes in the last couple of seasons (especially the ones involving Quark's mom or the Grand Nagus). And, although it was properly grand and tied up numerous loose ends, the finale was rather frustrating.
With ST:ENT, I feel like it combines my favorite aspects of all of the above series. Starfleet is young and The Federation isn't fully formed, thus the idealism is forming but it is constantly at conflict with circumstances. While not spanning as wide as on ST:DS9, there are more long story arcs and character development. This crew of the Enterprise really are exploring strange, new worlds...that are yet somewhat primally familiar with Trekkers. There is a level of spirituality that makes appearances here (spurned by the Vulcans here, instead of DS9's Bajorans). There is quite a bit of action, but doesn't sacrifice plot or take easy outs like the writers frequently did on VOY. I thought I really enjoyed Jeffrey Combs as Weyoun, but I love him even more as the blue-skinned Shram on ENT.
BUT... I have gotten a bit annoyed with the level of emotion displayed by the Vulcan T'Pol (although there is a plot point that attempts to allow the writers to loosen her emotions for a while). When ENT first aired, I was a periodic watcher and only caught bits and pieces of the Xindi storyline. My recollection was I was annoyed by the military aspect that I didn't expect from a Star Trek series. Watching it now, I caught the show from the beginning and saw how Starfleet struggled between pure exploration and matching up militarily with beings antagonistic against them. But I do see ENT-critics' point about the use of force.
In the end, though, ENT shines because the number of shows that blew me away were numerous, the shows I didn't like were rare, and there aren't any characters that make me want to mute when they are on screen or skip episodes focused on them. I don't think ENT is really different from the other Star Trek series, although it and DS9 probably sit on one side of a Star Trek seesaw with TNG and VOY on the other side.
