Why Enterprise Failed?

[Torm]

The fact that they totally fumbled the follow-up to that premise doesn't mean it wasn't a good premise to begin with.

And the thing that made this even worse was the schizo way some of the writers seemed to want to use the premise, and some didn't. So one episode you had Janeway and Chakotay being best buds, and the next she thought he was going to take her ship. Crazy.

 

[Orius]

Oh, I definitely agree thast Voyager's biggest problem was failing to use the premise. The whole Starfleet/Maquis conflict was featured only in the first season. And there were a number of silly things the producers did. For example, they had Neelix cooking to conserve energy from replicator use. But they still run the holodecks full tilt, and suck up energy that way. Why did this happen? Because the producers still wanted to play around with the holodeck. The big problem seems to be that Berman kept wanting to do TNG even though that show had ended after a fairly long and very successful run. There's spillover of that in Enterprise too, with stories and plots that are much more like TNG than TOS.

Anyway, talking about why Enterprise died they way it did is pretty much beating a dead horse.

 

[mattcolville]

Here's my take on it;

1) They were too thoughtful. They fell in love with the idea of setting up, over the course of the series all the stuff we're used to. So, in one episode they install the phasers. But they're not accurate enough. So, in another episode, they sit around shooting the things at asteroids to calibrate the targeting. Then, in ANOTHER episode, they actually use the things to disable specific ship systems. This kind of pacing is GREAT for people who are committed to watching. But if you're just tuning in to see the odd ep, you're going to miss all this stuff and wonder where the action is.

2) They were too slavishly devoted to the canon. It's the most canon-aware series in the franchise's history. Most fans never noticed this, and actually complained about the opposite. They SHOULD have done a reboot. Maybe even with the original characters. They may yet.

Ah well, it had a lot of good moments. I liked it.

 

[Ranger REG]

Here's my take on it;...

And what's your take on this fourth and final season of Enterprise?