Ranger REG said:
They would have discarded Braga's "Temporal Cold War" arc. Emphasize the contacts and the relations with Vulcans, Andorians, Tellarites, Alpha Centarauns, Rigellians, and Orions.
TCW and the Suliban and Xindi were big problems, and show the tightrope you're walking when you try to introduce a new villain out of nowhere. Anyone remember when TNG tried to make Ferengi the big bad evil race? Don't get me wrong, they salvaged it masterfully, but go watch the first episode where the Ferengi appear in TNG... big, powerful starships... elctrowhips taking out Riker and Worf... they wanted them to be scary and evil... and it didn't really work.
One very smart thing DS9 did was to take aliens that had already proven they had some staying power. Trill, Bajorans and Cardassians had all appeared as "aliens of the week" in TNG and then slowly worked into larger parts.
When DS9 *did* introduce new threats (the DOminion) they did it very slowly and carefully. One of the reasons the Dominion was introduced in babysteps (first you see a long Jem-hadar child... then you see a lone Vorta and some more Jem'hadar... then you find out the Founders are changelings... etc...).
They really introduced them one glimpse at a time and according to Behr one reason they did that, AND the reason they made the Dominion composed of three races, was the fear of the villain not working. They gave themselves a fall-back position and ruthlessly revised anything that didn't quite work. Remember the Vorta's telekinetic abilities? Me neither
So I don't fault Ent for trying to introduce new things, but when the TCW didn't click, they went with the Xindi, and that (for me) didn't click either. The best thing about the series for me, was the Andorian/Vulcan "cold war"... a case where they were giving more screen time to an underdeveloped species that had already proven it had some staying power (the Andorians).
Add the fact that a prequel series set a number of expectations the show clearly had no intention of trying to meet (you know, actually showing how the Federation came to be and exploring its history and first contact with major races) and you get a lot of unhappy fans.
Given that the storylines people were expecting (the history of the Federation) would have been popular and were what fans were expecting, the new stuff (TCW, Xindi) had to be lights out... and it wasn't.
Chuck