Full Season Review
D-Tier
Average Episode Rating: 2.28
Key Episodes
In its marketing push, Star Trek: Enterprise presented itself as hip, fresh, and ready to revitalize the franchise after a decade of waning public interest. However, this batch of 25 episodes was simply not up to that task. Even conceptually, Enterprise was troubled. Showrunners Brannon Braga and Rick Berman had intended the series to take a more terrestrial approach, drawing inspiration from The Right Stuff to tell the story about a space program launching the first Enterprise. The plans were foiled by a studio that wanted a starship exploring the galaxy by the end of the first episode. Star Trek: Picard's slow-to-start first season many years later demonstrated that this may have been a wise call. Unfortunately, leaving this central premise on the cutting room floor meant the nascent Enterprise had rushed past its central hook.
The result is a season of well-produced but generic and forgettable adventures. Very rarely is there an episode that feels specific to Enterprise, like it could only have worked on this show. While this isn't necessarily a weakness -- Voyager got seven seasons out of the generic approach -- it is disappointing to see a "fresh new show" fail to carve out its own identity. Uninspired outings like "Civilization" and "Oasis" feel like reheated leftovers from the other shows taken off the shelf for lack of better ideas. "Dear Doctor" tries to be a classic Prime Directive parable but botches the ending. When the Ferengi show up in "Acquisition," it's not as fun as their best Deep Space Nine outings. "Rogue Planet" wishes its alien hunters were as cool and memorable as the Hirogen. I could go on, but I think the point is clear: these stories lack strong character drama or intriguing sci-fi hooks, so they wind up feeling dull and slow-paced.
The Temporal Cold War serves as the season's main through-line, manifesting in an intentionally vague series of time travel incidents. Though loosely-defined, it is still moderately interesting at this stage. However, the big time travel adventures in "Cold Front" and "Shockwave" simply can't outdo Voyager's more creative and increasingly ridiculous time travel shenanigans in "Year of Hell" and "Relativity." That show upped the ante with time travel, gleefully jumping and re-jumping the shark to the point that the "wow" factor proves next to impossible to recapture here. It is telling that this arc's best episode "Detained," which managed to make the bland new Suliban more interesting, is also the only one without a central time travel conceit.
This season has the ignominious and rare distinction of having no episode rate above a 3 on my 5-point rating scale. To be fair, 3s are good episodes, but it's not a good sign to have an entire 25-episode season without any truly excellent standouts. There is a decent stretch of episodes mid-season starting around "The Andorian Incident" and ending around "Shuttlepod One," but he tail end of the season doesn't build on this momentum successfully. The only story arc the writers can muster by the end is a couple episodes of Risa teases before the crew goes on vacation in "Two Days and Two Nights."
Braga chose to approach Enterprise with only a few returning members of Voyager's writer's room, instead opting to recruit many new writers. In interviews since, he has admitted that this attempt to shake up the writer's room backfired. The new writers generally struggled to find their voices. For the most part, this season feels like it was written by people familiar with Star Trek but without any particular vision for the show. I don't want to place all the blame on new writers, however, since key early episodes "The Andorian Incident" and "Breaking the Ice" were contributions from fresh voices Fred Dekker and Maria & Andre Jacquemetton respectively.
Venerable actor Scott Bakula's Captain Archer is a surprisingly weak ingredient here. Archer doesn't quite meet the standards of his predecessors, at his worst coming across like a grouchy nepo-baby whose reckless command style is a recurring issue. It often feels like he is supposed to be both more flawed than and as infallible as the other Trek captains. He is mostly portrayed as a boy scout, but he also comes across as a bit of a jerk and kinda racist.
The rest of the cast is a mixed bag. Trip receives a good deal of focus and stands out among the human characters; the rest are underdeveloped. After their initial spotlight episodes, Season 1 can't find anything interesting to say about Reed, Sato, and Mayweather. T'Pol is the most intriguing character at this point, with subtly divided loyalties, growing bonds with Archer and Trip, and hints of emotions just beneath the surface. Unfortunately, she is also subjected to gratuitous sexualization both by the cameras and by the other characters. Archer, Trip, and Reed all find themselves in forced "sexy" situations with her at various points, beginning with the infamous decontamination gel scene in "Broken Bow."
What this season does best is blend the modern NASA aesthetic with classic Star Trek production design and storytelling. The show is at its best when it leans in the NASA-ness (for lack of a better word) of this low-tech era of the Star Trek universe in episodes like "Strange New Worlds," "Breaking the Ice," "Fortunate Son," and "Shuttlepod One." Even bad episodes like "Terra Nova" can be made more intriguing by tapping into the unique elements of this unexplored new era of the Trek universe.
