Full Season Review
D-Tier
Average Episode Rating: 2.42
Key Episodes
The second season of Star Trek: Enterprise shows the limitations of my numbers-and-averages rating system. This season had a higher average rating and more good episodes (i.e. more episodes rated ≥ 3) than its predecessor, placing it higher on my tier list. However, due to my granular focus on rating on individual episodes, it can be hard to account for how a season feels as a single cohesive whole. Despite the improved numbers, I found Season 2 left me with a slightly worse impression than Season 1.
What makes Season 2 feel less effective is that Enterprise's key unique elements are mostly left treading water. Outside of a few isolated entries like "The Catwalk," little sense remains of the novelty of Enterprise's discoveries or the low-tech scrappy NASA-like quality of the first season's early episodes. Whatever charm there was in the crew discovering the Star Trek universe for the first time is gone now; they are already at business-as-usual. The Temporal Cold War storyline does not advance at all despite being revisited multiple times -- there are no new revelations, the Suliban are mindless grunts without the depth from "Detained," the shadowy figure is still a blank cipher standing in for a real villain, and the time travel rules remain completely arbitrary. The thread involving the Vulcans and Andorians, ostensibly chronicling the beginnings of the Federation, is entirely on the back burner and only drives a single episode. Season 1 took both Archer and T'Pol on defined character arcs, smoothing their rough edges as the two developed a friendship. None of the characters have arcs across in Season 2. There is no sense that Enterprise is developing a world or driving towards anything. They might as well be in the Delta Quadrant.
With the unique storylines gathering dust, the vast majority of the season comprises the generic Trek standbys that dominated the tail end of Season 1. Most episodes this season are rather dull, with low-energy scripts that offer very little in terms of fresh spins or new ideas. "Vanishing Point" tries to combine "The Next Phase" and "Realm of Fear" but needs a frustrating "it was all a dream" ending to even try to glue them together. "Dawn" cribs "Darmok" but tosses out its cerebral ideas about language and only keeps the generic story housing them. Even "Judgment" and "Regeneration," two of the season's best episodes, don't have anything new on offer and rely heavily on nostalgic imagery and connections to more popular Trek installments. It just doesn't feel like there is much passion or verve here, just tired writers retelling old stories with a less compelling new cast.
Characters who aren't named Archer, Trip, or T'Pol don't fare well. Many episodes rely on the established chemistry of the central trio, which admittedly works quite well, but this comes at the expense of everyone else. Reed is kept afloat by a reliable on-screen friendship with Trip, and Phlox anchors a handful of solid B-plots, but the ensigns feel completely adrift without any strong relationships tying them to the rest of the ensemble. The writers don't come up with any ideas for them in their single spotlight episodes; "Vanishing Point" has Hoshi overcome her space travel fears despite having done so at least twice last season, and Mayweather's "Horizon" is a shameless repeat of his previous spotlight in "Fortunate Son." "Horizon" is the point at which the ravenous serpent of the show's lazy writing, devouring and regurgitating old Trek scripts, becomes an ouroboros.
Brannon Braga hired a host of new-to-the-franchise writers for Season 1 in an attempt to keep things fresh, a risk which did not pay off. Only one of these new voices stayed on board for Season 2: Chris Black, whose scripts have noticeably improved and include season highlight "Carbon Creek." Because of this writers' exodus, most of this season's writing staff are the holdover Voyager alums who already seemed out of ideas by the end of that show. Ironically, Braga only wound up re-creating the problem he initially tried to solve.
Season 2's most notable new writer John Shiban, a big get for Enterprise with an Emmy nomination for his writing on The X-Files and who would go on to even greater acclaim on Breaking Bad. He contributed solid episodes like "Minefield" and "The Breach" but left the staff before the next season, citing frustration that his ideas to shake up the series were not creatively welcome. Despite these creative differences, he was correct that the series needed a shake-up. Braga clearly came to the same conclusion: season finale "The Expanse" is less a cliffhanger and more a re-pilot to launch the most dramatically shaken-up season of this era of Star Trek.
Enterprise's juvenile approach to sensuality, typified by the decon lube scene in "Broken Bow," is another flaw carried over to the new season. In Season 1, this usually took a bizarre voyeuristic approach, having the characters show skin or get into kinky mishaps without actually acknowledging the situation as sexual. Season 2 grows more overt, but no less teenaged, about its sexualization. The problem is that Enterprise just doesn't know how to be sexy; it's hard not to cringe when Archer mumbles about his subordinate's breasts and lips after a wet dream in "A Night in Sickbay," or when an underwear-clad T'Pol tromps around the ship begging men for sex in "Bounty." This remains one of Enterprise's most uncomfortable elements, and failed in its goal of boosting Enterprise's fading audience with new teenage male viewers.
Enterprise's second season was not well-received and continued to lose viewers. It also aired at the same time that Star Trek: Nemesis was very publicly bombing at the box office. These were the current Star Trek entries in 2002 when noted critic Roger Ebert described the franchise as "out of gas" and "a copy of a copy of a copy." This was essentially the breaking point for the franchise. The familiar formula that had sustained Star Trek since The Next Generation's first (or arguably third) season ends with the finale of this season, as these pressures forced Enterprise to reinvent itself. Trek on TV would eventually recover from Enterprise and Trek on film would eventually recover from Nemesis, but the franchise has never been quite the same.
