TV: Enterprise

I wish I felt sadder about the announced cancellation of Enterprise. I like Star Trek in all its forms, and I admired a great many things about this series, especially Scott Bakula as Capt. Archer, and, recently, I've felt that the romantic interplay between Connor Trinneer's Trip and Jolene Blalock's T'Pol was done especially well. But I also saw Enterprise as a bundle of missteps and missed opportunities, which suggest to me that maybe it is time to give the franchise a little rest.

I mean, let's start right from the top -- and I know this has been nitpicked to death a million times over, but: that theme song. What in the hell were they thinking? It's so thematically inconsistent with this series and the Trek franchise; it starts every episode off on a jarringly wrong note (literally!). And it's indicative of the producers' failure to recognize and correct weaknesses in the show. After two years of fan complaints, rather than admitting defeat and properly revamping the opening credits, they "fixed" it by simply adding in a jangly, up-tempo guitar track. Whoopty-do.

Another fault of the show was its complete inability to find anything of interest for Ensigns Mayweather and Sato to do, just a complete lack of development for those two characters. A recent episode in which Hoshi was locked up in quarantine showed how interesting the character could have been; it set up a background story of failure at the Starfleet Academy, established some martial arts skills, and showed that her innate talent for understanding languages applied to the mathematical language of the ship's computers as well. I was fascinated, and I found myself liking Hoshi for the first time since the earliest episodes of season one. This is a full three and a half years into the series -- that's how long it took for any writer to give her anything more than the blandest, most token of development. Mayweather, though: a cipher from beginning to end.

And I've talked before about my disappointment with last year's season-long Xindi storyline, and the ludicrous alien Nazis time travel story that opened this, its fourth and now final season. The show grew much better as this season progressed, from the visits to the Vulcan homeworld, to Brent Spiner's three-episode guest shot, to the always-welcome return of Trek veteran Jeffrey Combs (he's played more different aliens on various Trek series than anyone in the history of the franchise) as the Andorian Commander Shran. But the damage had already been done. Clearly, I wasn't the only fan who had been turned off by the Xindi arc, and who in turn turned off the show. After its huge debut, Enterprise never stopped losing viewers, and I think a year of 9/11-inspired stories in uncharted space, with new and crushingly boring alien races, rather than the return to the familiar and beloved Klingons and Romulans that the fans seemed to want following the end of Voyager, sealed the show's fate -- even if it did manage to hold on for one more season.

Overall, I enjoyed the show. I'll miss it, and I'll feel the absence of any Trek product, on TV or in the movies. (I liked Nemesis -- was I the only one?) But hopefully in a couple years' time, and with some long-term thought and development, Trek will come back bigger than ever.